C. Botelho has a 5 years degree in Biological Eng. (UMinho). She has multidisciplinary path with national and international collaborations, focusing on the development of efficient therapies bone pathologies. Several steps are required to achieve the proposed goal; i) understand disease physiology, cellular behaviour and metabolic pathway; ii) efficient molecule delivery; iii) assess the biological potential of new molecules and iv) development of a robust screening platform. i) PhD - the candidate studied the effect of silicon calcium phosphate (Si-CaP) on bone cells. The PhD was based at University of Porto (UP), but most of the experimental work was carried out at Cambridge University, and Imperial College London (both at UK) and NAIST (Japan). Her work was presented and awarded in several international conferences, from USA to Australia. As a recognition of her contribution to the biomaterials and tissue engineering field, she was and awarded “The European Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Doctoral Award” by the European Society for Biomaterials (ESB). Upon completing her PhD, she carried on working on CaP and bone defects (Porto University and Cambridge University). The work developed led to a patent (WO2009/126054A1). To improve her knowledge on molecular biology and diseases metabolism, she worked on several projects in distinct areas of knowledge, from molecular biology to infectiology (see CV) ii) Carrier – with the team of A. Gomes (Ciência ID 6D1D-7876-0BFB), the candidate developed a nanocarrier with high specificity, an exosome-mimetic liposome, which resulted in a patent (PT 116560). The carrier has multiple advantages, e.g. ability to cross the Blood Brain Barrier and high biocompatibility. Simultaneously, in collaboration with International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL), the candidate worked on the optimization of another carrier, cubosome. Cubosomes have the ability to incorporate molecules with different characteristics simultaneous (e.g. hydrophobic and hydrophilic) allowing the synchronised delivery of molecules, increasing their synergy. iii) Assessment of Natural molecules bioactivity, which can be used alone or in synergy with synthetic ones to enhance therapeutic results and reduced toxicity. For e.g, the incorporation into a cubosome of an anti-cancer natural molecule with a lower dose of doxorubicin (toxic molecule used in bone cancer chemotherapy), could enhance the outcome with reduced toxicity. This is an ongoing work with the Vigo University and the Zaragoza University (both in Spain). There are several sources to obtain these molecules, like the flora (e.g Sambucus nigra) or waste material from the agro-industry, (e.g. chicken feathers or avocado peels). An interesting result came out of this work, one of the analysed extracts, rich in phenolics compounds, demonstrated a significant biological potential, not only in terms of anti-oxidant activity, but also in the ability to distinctively influence cancer and non-cancerous cell lines. Induce a toxicity effect on cancerous cells, but not on non-cancerous cells (ongoing work). iv) The platform. - Development of a robust platform for the validation of the new therapies. This work is in collaboration with INEB – i3S and Cambridge University (UK). C.Botelho developed a strong network with academic research centres and with different industry sectors to contribute for the development of new strategies to answer society needs. She was actively involved on the preparation of EEA Grant (PT-INNOVATION-0096) and is the direct responsible for the design of the experimental work at the UMinho with the collaboration of J. Teixeira (0414-2642-9CC5). The candidate lectures at UMinho (>10 years) and it was invited to lecture at national and international postgraduate courses, supervised master and PhD students. Recently, she formed her own research group. C. Botelho gave birth to 2 children (2009 and 2015), leading to prolonged absences from work.