Manuel R. Teixeira

Manuel R. Teixeira was born in Porto in 1967 and received his medical degree from the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (ICBAS) of the University of Porto (UP) in 1992. He obtained his PhD (Dr Med) degree in Medicine (Medical Genetics) at the University of Oslo, Norway, after performing his doctoral studies in the field of cytogenetic heterogeneity of breast cancer at the Department of Medical Genetics of Odense University Hospital in 1993-1994 and then at the Department of Genetics at the Institute for Cancer Research, The Norwegian Radium Hospital (now part of Oslo University Hospital) in 1994-1997, under the supervision of Prof. Sverre Heim. He then obtained a postoctoral research position from the Norwegian Cancer Society for 1998-2000 to work on molecular cytogenetic methods to gather prognostic information from diagnostic biopsies of prostate cancer patients at the Oslo University Hospital. In February 2001 Manuel R. Teixeira was hired as Assistant Researcher at the Portuguese Oncology Institute of Porto (IPO Porto) and was appointed Coordinating Researcher in 2008. He is the Head of the Department of Genetics of this institution since May 2001, where he was responsible for the implementation the areas of molecular cytogenetics diagnosis of hematological diseases and conventional and molecular cytogenetic diagnosis of soft tissue tumors and for genetic counseling of families with inherited cancer predisposition (from June 2004 to 2021). In September 2003 he led the implementation of the IPO Porto Research Center (CI-IPOP), being appointed its Director from 2003 to 2021, in parallel with his diagnostic activities at the Department of Genetics. The CI-IPOP has been recognized as a Research and Development Unit since 2004 by the Portuguese Science and Tecnology Foundation and was classified as Excellent in the last international evaluation. Besides his main appointment at IPO Porto, Manuel R. Teixeira is a Guest Full Professor at the School of Medicine and Biological Sciences (ICBAS) of the University of Porto, where he his responsible for the curricular unit of Medical Genetics of the integrated master degree in Medicine, as well as of the curricular units of Oncobiology (MSc degree in Oncology), Genes and Cancer (PhD degree in Pathology and Molecular Genetics), and Molecular Cytogenetics (MSc and PhD degrees in Molecular Medicine and Oncology). His research interests are persued as the coordinator of the Cancer Genetic Group of CI-IPOP, which aims to characterize the pattern of germline and somatic genetic alterations that are involved in carcinogenesis, under the assumption that tailor-made therapy specifically directed towards the altered metabolism of tumor cells requires exact knowledge about the inherited and acquired genomic abnormalities of individual patients, not just about diagnostic categories. Over the years his group has discovered several novel gene fusions in different malignant diseases, as well as several founder germline variants associated with cancer predisposition. As PI or Co-PI, he has raised competitive funding at national and European level. He has authored or co-authored more than 350 publications in international peer-reviewed journals and several book chapters and his publications were cited more than 13.000 times (H-index: 60).