Mafalda Santos is co-author of 8 articles published in peer-reviewed Journals (Scopus Author ID:57193680041; ORCID:0000-0001-8102-3287). Number of citations in July 2023 =262 (Google Scholar total citations); h-index=5, i10-index=5 (Google Scholar); Cumulative Impact Factor=42.558. Mafalda Santos research has been focused on non-mainstream topics related to cancer research. During her MSc in in Biochemistry (Italy), she found that miR-196a is a major mediator of the PI3K/Akt pathway in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer. Later, her Ph.D. and early Post-doc research unveiled that Protein Synthesis Errors (PSE) and tRNA deregulation foster tumor growth by activating cancer-related cellular pathways, similarly to KRasV12 mutated cells. Moreover, she contributed to demonstrate that human cells adapt to PSE activating different pathways along time. She developed several cellular and animal models to study this phenomenon, including a multidisciplinary methodology that detects PSE in living cells and tumors by mass spectrometry. Building these tools, allowed to demonstrate for the first time, that epithelial tumors have higher PSE levels than the normal tissues from which they arise, and they led to the preliminary evidences that tRNA deregulation and PSE can modulate cell migration, invasion and drug resistance. To improve her skills, she took laboratory animal science training (FELASA category C), Cell Culture and OMICS courses and a Training Program in Pharmaceutical Medicine and Clinical Research. Mafalda also participated in the 2018 edition of Hitech (entrepreneurship program for scientists) as a team member of "Sensorium: A novel tool to detect protein aggregation". In terms of academic experience, Mafalda was invited to give a lecture in the Advanced Course in Oncobiology for the CBAS PhD Program. Mafalda has mentored one MSc student from the Masters in Cellular and Biology (Uni. of Aveiro) and she supervised a student from the MSc in Medicine and Molecular Oncobiology (Uni. of Porto), both finishing with 19/20. Moreover, Mafalda has been involved in 5 fully funded projects as a team member. She led an FCT-funded project (PTDC/MED-ONC/28834/2017) evaluated with 4.92/5, which allowed her to achieve some research independence. Mafalda and her team demonstrated that tRNA imbalance promotes malignant transformation and confer therapy resistance to lung cancer cells. During this period, she became involved with other projects more related to bioinformatics and EMT plasticity in breast cancer. This topic caught her attention and she embraced a new challenge to explore the role of tissue-resident microbiota in breast cancer as part of the iMM-Laço Hub. In conclusion, across the last 5 years, Mafalda published 8 papers, four as first author which describe the groundbreaking discoveries that allowed her to get extramural funding and she is starting a new position to apply her knowledge to yet another ground-breaking research field.