Carolina S. Dantas is a PhD student at the Institute for Research and Innovation in Health (i3S) at the University of Porto. In 2020, she completed a bachelor's degree in Biochemistry from the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Porto, followed by a master's degree in Oncology in 2022 from the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (ICBAS) at the same university. 

In 2021, she joined the Immunology, Cancer & Glycomedicine group at i3S, led by Salomé Pinho. Her master's thesis work focused on the role of glycans in the serrated pathway of colorectal cancer, identifying a specific N-glycan signature as a potential early biomarker. She also explored glycoreprogramming as a therapeutic strategy to enhance the antitumor immune response. 

After graduating, she enrolled in the Biomedical Sciences doctoral program at ICBAS, supported by the EU-funded GlycanTrigger project (ID: 101093997). 

Carolina’s PhD research lies at the intersection of glycobiology, immunology, and glycomics, aiming to unravel the molecular changes in the gut mucosa glycome during the transition from health to intestinal inflammation. Additionally, she seeks to characterize how glycans modulate immune-mediated responses in the context of inflammatory bowel disease. 

During the first year of her PhD, she was awarded an EFIS-Immunology Letters Short-Term Fellowship, which enabled her to visit the Center for Proteomics and Metabolomics at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) to gain insights into the field of glycomics. During this period, she was also part of the Cancer Immunogenomics group at LUMC, where she gained expertise in various spatial omics techniques, including Imaging Mass Cytometry.