She was born in Lisbon, at the end of her studies at the University of Aveiro, a coastal city north of the capital, and then moved to the United States, where she lived for two decades. “At the time, I was very interested in astrobiology, a field devoted to searching for life on other planets,” she recalls. “After that, I learned about an internship at NASA, which I applied for and succeeded in.”
It was in this field that she ended up earning a master’s degree and a doctorate, which eventually caught her attention Mayo Clinic, which was beginning its program to uncover the human microbiome, that is, the trillions of bacteria, viruses and fungi that colonize our bodies. “They also wanted to bring to the team microbiologists who were not from the clinical field and who had a more ecological perspective and knowledge of different research methods and techniques.”
Upon her arrival, the scientist knew that she could expand her studies to include departments that wanted to advance research on the microbiome, and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology quickly became very excited about the opportunity.
The boss there, the Italian doctor Andrea Mariani, who specializes in endometrial cancer, told his new colleague that it might be useful to examine the uteruses of patients diagnosed with endometrial cancer, because he always noticed inflammation and suspected it if they looked in detail at the uterus. Microorganisms there can detect something.
“First, we mapped the species that live not just in this organ, but in the entire female reproductive system,” says Dr. Marina. “Then we compared the uterine microbiome from women with endometrial cancer with women who had surgery for other reasons. We wanted to see if there was any difference. And so we observed a range of microbes that appeared in women with endometrial cancer.”
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