Cláudia Patrícia Almeida Alves
PhD Student



Research Activities

My main research interests are in the fields of Biotechnology, Bioprocess Engineering, Molecular Biology and Genetics. My research focuses on the production and purification of biopharmaceuticals, namely DNA minicircles, by (i) improvement of resolvase expression and parental plasmid recombination efficiency, (ii) engineering of an improved E. coli host producing strain and selection of optimal growth conditions to promote intramolecular DNA recombination and maximize minicircle production.

Selected Publications

Alves CPA, Simčíková M, Brito L, Monteiro GA, Prazeres DMF (2018), Production and Purification of Supercoiled Minicircles by a Combination of In Vitro Endonuclease Nicking and Hydrophobic Interaction Chromatography, Hum Gene Ther Methods 29(4):157-168, doi: 10.1089/hgtb.2018.046

Silva-Santos AR, Alves CPA, Monteiro GA, Azevedo AM, Prazeres DMF (2018) Multimodal chromatography of supercoiled minicircles: a closer look into DNA-ligand interactions, Sep. Purif. Technol.  doi:10.1016/j.seppur.2018.11.015

Serra J, Alves CPA, Brito L, Monteiro GA, Cabral JMS, Prazeres DMF, da Silva CL (2018) Engineering of human mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSC) with VEGF-encoding minicircles for angiogenic ex vivo gene therapy, Hum Gene Ther. doi: 10.1089/hum.2018.154

Šimčíková M, Alves CPA, Brito L, Prather KLJ, Prazeres DMF, Monteiro GA (2016) Improvement of DNA minicircle production by optimization of the secondary structure of the 5'-UTR of ParA resolvase, Appl Microbiol Biotechnol. 100(15):6725-6737, doi: 10.1007/s00253-016-7565-x

Alves CPA, Šimčíková M, Brito L, Monteiro GA, Prazeres DMF (2016) Development of a nicking endonuclease-assisted method for the purification of minicircles, J Chromatogr A. 1443:136-44, doi: 10.1016/j.chroma.2016.03.035

 

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