Joana Paredes (JParedes) is Principal Investigator at the Cancer Genetics group at IPATIMUP and Affiliated Professor at the Department of Pathology and Oncology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto. JParedess research focus is to identify important molecular markers for breast cancer management and treatment, with a special focus on poor prognosis basal-like breast cancer. In clinical terms, JParedes found that de novo expression of the adhesion molecule P-cadherin is overexpressed in near 30% of breast carcinomas, being a poor prognostic factor for patients. Further, she identified molecular mechanisms underlying P-cadherin aberrant expression in breast cancer, such as epigenetic events, as well as transcription factors. JParedes still identified P-cadherin-associated molecular partners and signalling and how its activation promotes cancer cell invasion, which involves MMPs secretion, ECM remodeling, as well as alterations in cancer metabolim. Importantly, she verified that P-cadherin confers stem cell properties to breast cancer cells, turning them resistant to standard cancer therapies. JParedes has 53 publications in international peer-review journals, with a total number of 1302 citations, with an h-index of 21. She got funding as PI from different sources, including National Science Foundation (FCT) and Gulbenkian Foundation, Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis International, and Associação Laço. JParedes has supervised 6 PhD students that completed their theses in 2011-2014. As an independent researcher, she attracted members to a multidisciplinary team, which currently comprises 3 post-doc, 2 MD/PhD students, 1 PhD student, 6 master students/technicians.