Miguel Soares obtained his BS in biology (1990), MS in cellular biology (1994) and Ph.D. in Science (1995) at the University of Louvain, Belgium. He became a research fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Fritz H. Bach at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA (1995-1998), then instructor in surgery (1998- 2004) and lecturer (2003-2004) at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. He subsequently moved to the “Instituto Gulbekian de Ciência”, Oeiras, Portugal (2004), as a ”Principal Investigator”. Miguel Soares is an associate professor at “Universidade Nova de Lisboa”, Portugal and an invited professor at Lisbon Medical School, “Universidade de Lisboa”, Portugal.

The research effort developed by the laboratory of Miguel Soares at the “Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência” evolves around understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms regulating inflammation and how these might be used therapeutically to overcome the pathological outcome of immune mediated inflammatory diseases. His research team has been directly involved in the discovery that transplanted organs can express “protective genes”, i.e. heme oxygenase-1, that are essential to support their survival (Nature Medicine, 1998; 4, 91-8). That carbon monoxide (CO), the gasotransmitter produced by heme oxygenase-1, acts in a anti inflammatory (Nature Medicine, 2000, 6, 4, 422-428) and cytoprotective (J. Exp. Med., 2001, 192, 1015-25) manner to control the outcome of inflammation, and that CO can be used therapeutically to prevent the progression of a variety of immune mediated inflammatory diseases, including in organ transplantation (J. Immunol, 2001, 166, 4185-4194), transplant associated arteriosclerosis and restenosis (Nature Medicine, 2003, 9, 183-190), ischemia & reperfusion injury (The FASEB Journal. 2004; 18:771-772), autoimmune neuroinflammation (J. Clin. Invest. 2007, 117, 438-447) as well as severe forms of malaria (Nature Medicine, 2007, 13: 703-10 and Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2009; 106 (37):15837-42).