Dr Annie Cristhine Moraes Sousa Squiavinato

Postdoctoral Fellow

 
I am a cancer biologist integrating wet-lab and computational approaches. My work focuses on understanding tumor progression, using functional genomics, spatial transcriptomics, and patient-derived models to identify therapeutic vulnerabilities.

Career

Annie holds a Master’s degree in Pathology from UNESP – Botucatu (Brazil) and a Ph.D. in Oncology/Cellular Biology from the Brazilian National Cancer Institute (INCA, Brazil). Her research aims to understand cancer progression and identify new therapeutic strategies. She further advanced her training with two postdoctoral positions at INCA: a four-year fellowship in the Cellular and Molecular Cancer Biology group (2019–2023), followed by a two-year fellowship in the Tumor Biology Laboratory (2023–2025).

Her expertise covers tumor progression, signaling pathways, bioinformatics, including genomic, exome, bulk and single-cell RNA-seq, and spatial transcriptomics analysis, and cancer pathogenesis and aggressiveness (metastasis). She possesses comprehensive skills across cancer biology methods, ranging from hands-on techniques such as 2D/3D cell culture, generation of resistant cell lines, functional assays (migration, invasion), and molecular analyses (Western blot, qPCR, IHC) to computational analysis of RNA-seq and single-cell/spatial transcriptomics data, effectively integrating wet-lab and dry-lab approaches.

Seeking to expand into translational research and acquire advanced genomic and bioinformatic skills, she shifted her focus to acral melanoma (AM) under the guidance of her supervisor, Dra. Patricia Possik (Sanger Fellow and principal investigator at INCA). Her work centers on this subtype, which has limited therapeutic options and poor outcomes and remains under-characterized, particularly in admixed populations such as those in Latin America.

As a co-lead in a study integrating WES, RNA-seq, CRISPR screens, and drug profiling, she helped establish patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models of AM. This work, supervised by Dra. Possik, created a valuable resource reflective of Latin American ancestry and identified potential therapeutic targets for this neglected cancer.

Most recently, she completed a one-year postdoctoral fellowship (2025–2026) at the Wellcome Sanger Institute under the supervision of Dr. David Adams in the Somatic Genetics Department. There, she further developed her bioinformatics skills, published an article on cellular neurothekeoma that provided the first comprehensive characterization of its genomic landscape and identified copy-number alterations as a driver event of this tumor type, and is currently working on Kaposiform hemangioendothelioma using spatial transcriptomics at INCA in collaboration with the Sanger Institute. Her current research aims to characterize the cellular and spatial architecture of the tumor microenvironment to elucidate the mechanisms underlying its high hemorrhagic risk and to identify potential therapeutic avenues.

My timeline

Quick links

 

Dr Squiavinato's Google Scholar