Andrea is Marie-Curie COFUND research fellow at INL at the System Biology Group, Cell Mechanics Laboratory under supervision of Ines Mendes Pinto. She is working on the development of a lab-on-chip for the detection of neuroinflammation and in the identification of actomyosin-based biomarkers relevant for microglia activation.

Andrea has a graduation in Microbiology at the Faculty of Biotechnology – Portuguese Catholic University (Portugal) and an International Master in Biotechnology by the Montfort University (UK). She has a Ph.D in Health Sciences, from the from the School of Medicine, University of Minho in the field of cellular and molecular immunology and has done her Post-doctoral at ICVS and at the Trudeau Institute in the disease biomarker identification and in the developments on drug delivery systems for the treatment of infectious diseases; and also at the, Institute for Molecular and Cell Biology (IBMC/I3S) Porto, on the regulation of gene expression in microglia, oligodendrocytes and neuronal cells.

• Sandra O. Braz*, Andrea Cruz*, Andrea Lobo*, Joana Bravo, Joana Moreira-Ribeiro, Isabel Pereira-Castro, Jaime Freitas, Joao B. Relvas, Teresa Summavielle, Alexandra Moreira. *These authors contribute equally to the work.
  Expression of Rac1 alternative 3`UTRs is a cell specific mechanism with a function in dendrite outgrowth in cortical neurons.
  BBA Gene Regulatory Mechanisms (2017), doi:10.1016/j.bbagrm.2017.03.002.

• Andrea Cruz, Paula Ludovico, Egídio Torrado, José Bernardo Gama, Jeremy Sousa, Joana Gaifem, Rui Appelberg, Fernando Rodrigues, Andrea M Cooper, Jorge Pedrosa, Margarida Saraiva.
  IL-17A promotes intracellular growth of Mycobacterium by inhibiting apoptosis of infected macrophages.
  Front. Immunol. 6:498.(2015) doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2015.00498.

• Andrea Cruz, Egídio Torrado, Jenny Carmona, Alexandra G. Fraga, Patrício Costa, Fernando Rodrigues, Rui Appelberg, Margarida Correia-Neves, Andrea M. Cooper, Margarida Saraiva, Jorge Pedrosa, António G. Castro.
  BCG vaccination-induced long-lasting control of Mycobacterium tuberculosis correlates with the accumulation of a novel population of CD4+IL-17+TNF+IL-2+ T cells.
  Vaccine (2015), 33, 85–91.

• Andrea Cruz, Alexandra G. Fraga, Jeffrey Fountain, Javier Rangel-Moreno, Egídio Torrado, Margarida Saraiva, Daniela Pereira, Jorge Pedrosa, Andrea M. Cooper and António G. Castro.
  Pathological role of interleukin 17 in mice subjected to repeated BCG vaccination after infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
  J Exp Med. (2010); 207:1609-16.