Alves-Figueiredo, Hugo Jorge

Academia Hugo Alves Figueiredo is a biochemist from the University of Évora, Portugal. He concluded with honors a Master¿s degree in biochemistry, from the University of Coimbra, Portugal, focusing his work on the physiology and biophysics of the pancreatic beta cell in health and disease. He then moved to Barcelona, Spain where he concluded in June 2018 his doctoral degree in Biomedicine with Excellent Cum Lauder honors from the University of Barcelona. His thesis was developed in the Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), in the field of advanced therapies for type 1 diabetes where he described a new pathway to induce safer and quicker revascularization of transplanted islets. He also developed seminal studies in the production of insulin-producing cells, and pathophysiological mechanisms in pancreatic beta cells and its cross-talk with white adipose in obesity and type 2 diabetes. In 2018 he moved to Mexico as a postdoc in Cardiovascular Research and Metabolomics, with Dr. Gerardo García, at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences and the Institute for Obesity Research, Tecnológico de Monterrey. His research was focused on understanding the underlying mechanisms of mitochondrial dysfunction and its role in the development of pathological hypertrophy in heart failure. He also established and developed studies around the characterization of the intraventricular hemodynamics (PVLOOPS), and contributed importantly to the failing heart's molecular signaling and validating antioxidants and drug/delivery systems as potential translational therapies in HF. He currently serves as a researcher, coordinator and adjunct professor in the field of advanced clinical therapies for diabetes and cardiometabolic, at the Tecnológico de Monterrey and TecSalud, to address critical translational and clinical research in the search and development of solutions to obesity and diabetes. His project focuses on establishing the Advanced Clinical Therapies Center, TecSalud, with the primary goal of implementing pancreatic islet transplant therapy for diabetes in Mexico, under good manufacturing practices (GMP). In parallel Hugo recently started to constitute his pre-clinical group and a laboratory with the purpose to develop fundamental and transcendental research in pancreatic human islet transplantation, islet pathophysiology and development of drug-delivery systems to improve islet transplantation. In this frame, he is also establishing an advanced microscopy laboratory to generate an in vivo platform to assess longitudinally the physiology and survival of living cells, tissue, organoids and spheroids by using the anterior chamber of the mouse eye as a transplantation site and a natural body window. Awards Hugo has been awarded some distinguishing prizes, like ¿Premio de investigación Básica¿ de la L¿Acadèmia de Ciencias Médicas y de la Salud de Cataluña y Baleares en 2014; Alberto Renold Fellowship from the European Foundation for the Study of Diabetes (EFSD) en 2018; Appointed to the Mexican National Researcher System in 2020.