José Belo is a Full Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at NMS where is the Coordinator of the PhD Program ProRegeM. He
is a Principal Investigator at iNOVA4Health/NMS, where from 2014 to 2019 he served as a Vice-Director and from 2014 to 2023
as a coordinator of the Animal Facility. José A. Belo has a PhD in Biomedicine by the Porto University, Portugal, having conducted
his PhD research at HHMI/UCLA, USA. Prior to joining NMS/CEDOC in 2013, he started as a PI at Gulbenkian Institute of Science
(IGC/FCG) in 1999 and in 2003 moved to University of Algarve as an Associate Professor where he obtained the title of "Agregado"
in 2006. Between 2013-16, he was the PT Delegate for "Excellent Science" HORIZON 2020. He is a founding member (2004) of Portuguese
Society of Stem Cells-Cell Therapy (SPCE-TC), from which he is currently the Chairman of the General Assembly, after having
served before (2004-2008), and the Vice-President (2008-2012). He has been involved in the setting-up of several Research
Units, first at IGC, after at University of Algarve and now since 2013 at CEDOC/NMS. Starting in 2000, Belo´s lab was focused
in the establishment of the body axis of the early vertebrate embryo, studying of the molecular pathways involved in A-P and
L-R body asymmetry. For this purpose, they use ES Cells, mouse, Xenopus and chick embryos as model systems using the most
up to date technologies in molecular embryology. Those include generation and analysis of KO mouse lines, chick electroporation,
mouse and human ES cell differentiation and CRISPR/CAS9 technologies. In the recent 8 years, besides maintaining their interest
in the L-R axis due to the role of Cerl2/DAND5, we focus our studies on the induction and control of myocardium and coronary
vasculature development, organogenesis and function. We demonstrated the importance of the Nodal signaling in heart formation
and the role of Cerl2/DAND5 in the control of cardiomyocyte proliferation. We are using mouse and human ES/PS cell to study
the control of ES/PS cell differentiation towards cardiogenic tissue. We have performed a differential screen searching for
early cardiogenic genes, one of them being the high profile Ccbe1, now under investigation by our and other labs around the
world. We found CCBE1 to be crucial for the generation of ES cell derived cardiomyocytes and uncover its role in the establishment
of the coronary vessels network in the developing heart. We are thus studying the role of this gene in the specification of
cardiogenic mesoderm and of the coronary vasculature aiming to develop novel approaches/methods for possible applications
for Regenerative Medicine. We are conducting these studies in collaboration with a team at MGH, Harvard University and with
a bioprocesses engineering team. We have been recently driving a study with a cohort of human patients with congenital heart
disease from which they identified a variation in the Cerl2 human homologue, DAND5. After generating iPS cell lines for some
of these patients, he has been performing several studies of patient specific disease modeling on the study of cardiomyocyte
formation, proliferation and electrophysiology. We aim to understand the aetiology and treatment of Cardio-Vascular Disease,
from a Developmental Biology, Genetics and physiology perspective, with Regenerative Medicine purposes. With 54 papers published
in international journals with peer-review (over 2000 citations; h-Index=21, Web of Science); over 70 Oral presentations and
170 Poster presentations in international Meetings/Conferences, some of them individually listed in the OUTPUTS and ACTIVITIES
Sections. Supervised 13 PhD thesis(es) and 21 MSc dissertation(s). Supervised 15 Post-doctoral Fellowships and currently supervises
1 PD Fellowship and 2 PhD contracted investigators. Was and/or is the Coordinator/PI of 4 international projects and of 15
FCT projects. Participated as collaborator/institutional PI, in 5 FCT projects.
