Cátia Gomes, PhD

Cátia Gomes received her undergraduate training in Biology from University of Évora, Portugal. She pursued her studies with a master’s degree in Molecular Genetics and Biomedicine from NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal and received her PhD in Pharmacy – Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Lisbon, Portugal. Dr. Gomes is particularly interested in the development and characterization of neurodegenerative disease models for the discovery of novel and more effective therapies. In her PhD, she identified and characterized an abnormal population of toxic astrocytes in an Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis mouse model, and used directly converted astrocytes from ALS patient fibroblasts as a platform to characterize this population in humans and screen for potential therapeutic agents. In 2020, Dr. Gomes started her postdoctoral training under the mentorship of Dr. Jason Meyer at Indiana University School of Medicine. Dr. Gomes' current projects focus on the establishment of disease models based on the use of patient-derived human pluripotent stem cells to study mechanisms of neurodegeneration as well as neuron-glia interactions. Dr. Gomes is very interested in the development of new disease models and platforms for drug discovery projects that will allow a more accurate screening of therapeutic agents for future translation into clinic.