Rita Sofia Salvador Simões Capela

Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Medicines

Research Institute for Medicines (iMed.ULisboa) - Medicinal Chemistry Group

Rita Capela has a degree in Chemistry and PhD in Pharmacy. Nowadays, Rita Capela is a Junior Researcher, and her main research is the development of antimalarial drugs with dual action based on an endoperoxide scaffold using a hybrid drug design approach. The design of these hybrid compounds was a breakthrough, as the ability to target both liver and blood stages of Plasmodium spp opened new options for malaria treatment. This approach was applied in the treatment of leishmaniasis disease and recently in the discovery of new antitumoral compounds. Rita Capela has recent papers as first author and supervised several Master and Erasmus students. She received funding on an iMed project as a Co-Principal Investigator and participated as a team member on several FCT funded projects.