Miguel Castanho is the Head of the Department of Biochemistry of the School of Medicine of the University of Lisbon and PI at Gulbenkian Institute for  Molecular Medicine, which is part of the Lisbon Medical Academic Center. The goal of Miguel Castanho’s group is to unravel the physical principles that govern interactions at the molecular level of clinically relevant compounds with animal models and model cell systems, with the objective of developing new drugs, as well as improving the understanding of the mechanism(s) of action of established drugs. Miguel Castanho has expertise in the design and study of membrane-active peptides with anti-infective and anticancer activities using experimental methods developed in-house, as well as structural biology approaches. One of the main focuses of his research group is the study of peptide drugs or peptide-drug conjugates able to transmigrate across the Blood-Brain-Barrier and target enveloped viruses or breast cancer brain metastases in the Central Nervous System. He is the coordinator of the international consortium NOVIRUSES2BRAIN (European Innovation Council; FET-OPEN, Grant 828774) and participates in two European Commission-funded consortia (EvaMobs and AVITHRAPID).