Cristina Xavier (CX) is an Invited Assistant Professor (full time) at the University Institute of Health Sciences (IUCS-CESPU), a Lab Member in the Toxicologic Pathology Research Lab (UCIBIO-IUCS-CESPU), and a Research Collaborator at the Cancer Drug Resistance Group (i3S). She is also a Managing Committee member (representing Portugal) since 2023 of the COST Action CA21116 about Research on Pancreatic Cancer. CX holds an H-index (Scopus) of 19 with 43 publications in peer reviewer journals (12 as 1st author and 9 as last or corresponding author). CX is graduated in Applied Biology at University of Minho (UM), Portugal (2006) and she completed an European PhD (2010) in Health Sciences (4-years FCT grant) at UM, in collaboration with the Institute of Cancer Biology (Denmark) dedicated to identify novel compounds/combinations to improve cancer therapy. CX holds a 3-year Postdoc contract (2012-2015) at Division of Cancer Therapeutics, Institute of Cancer Research (ICR)-UK. Her main project aimed to identify novel genes crucial in pancreatic cancer, by performing a high throughput screening of a panel of cell lines. Promising results obtained prompted new research projects inside the group. She was also involved in multidisciplinary Drug Discovery Projects by performing preclinical studies that led to the enrollment of 2 small molecules into Phase 1 clinical trials. She also generated pancreatic cancer cells resistant to a drug to test “in house” small molecules. In 2015, CX joined the CDR group at i3S, led by Prof. Helena Vasconcelos. She had a Postdoc Grant (1 year, 2016) within a funded project to study the contribution of Extracellular Vesicles (EVs) to cancer drug resistance. Then, she was awarded an Individual FCT Postdoc Grant (2017-2023) to understand the contribution of macrophage-secreted EVs to drug resistance in pancreatic cancer. This work, in collaboration with IPO-Porto, gave rise to a new line of research in the group and she received a financial stimulus (2021-2022) to lead a “Beacon Project” in the framework of Porto Comprehensive Cancer Center (PCCC). She was also involved in other related projects to identify novel compounds/drug combinations to counteract cancer drug resistance in lung cancer. Currently, as a senior and a more independent researcher, CX´s research line focuses in the discovery of novel molecular targets and combination therapies to counteract drug resistance in pancreatic cancer. The most impactful research outputs were the: 1) Identification of CHI3L1 as responsible for pancreatic cancer drug resistance (PMID: 33212158); 2) Identification of drugs inhibitors of CHI3L1 able to counteract those resistance (PMID: 33212158; 39225813); 3) Creation of a pancreatic cancer drug resistant cell line as a model to discover novel drugs. The following projects aim to test combination therapies with CHI3L1 inhibitors in advanced pancreatic cancer cellular models. CX has supervising 5 PhD (ongoing) and 11 MSc (1 ongoing) students, and 10 (1 ongoing) students doing master/course degree. She has been establishing strong international collaborations as a member of 3 COST Actions: CA21135 (“Modelling immunotherapy response and toxicity in cancer”; 2022-2026); CA21116 (“Identification of biological markers for prevention and translational medicine in pancreatic cancer”, 2022-2026) and CA17104 (“New diagnostic and therapeutic tools against multidrug resistant tumors”, 2018-2022). CX is currently a Guest Co-Editor of 2 Open Special Issues in IJMS (“Recent Trends in Experimental Models for Cancer Research”) and in Cells (“Unlocking the secrets behind drug resistance at the cellular level”), she is on the Reviewer Board of several scientific journals (IJMS, Molecules, JMCM and Cancer Treatment and Research Communication) and she reviewed more than 50 papers for international journals. CX is a Science Ambassador for EACR and an EORTC member.