Sofía Carreira Santos

Sofía Carreira Santos is an immunologist with a keen interest in the interplay between the immune system and small molecules, particularly the role of MAIT cells. She is currently completing her PhD in Natural Killer (NK) cell biology at the University of Extremadura, with the main topic of her thesis being Cytokine-Induced Memory-Like (CIML) NK cells and their potential applications in tumour immunotherapy. Her doctoral research is supervised by Prof. Raquel Tarazona Lafarga and Dr. Javier García Casado. Before her PhD, Sofía spent three years at Lund University (Sweden) in the group of Prof. Malin Lindstedt, where she worked characterizing the tumour microenvironment in head and neck cancer, establishing organoid models, and using a dendritic cell model to study antigen sensitization and immune activation. She joined the Immunity and Small Molecules Lab at CiMUS, led by Dr. Iria Gómez Touriño, in 2024, to further explore how small antigens and metabolites influence MAIT cell activation and regulation.