Gonçalo Castelo-Branco

Gonçalo Castelo-Branco is a Professor of Glial Cell Biology, Deputy Head of Department and Chair of Senate, at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Prof. Castelo-Branco received his B.Sc. in Biochemistry in 1999 at the University of Coimbra, Portugal and his PhD in Medical Biochemistry in 2005, at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, working on development of dopaminergic neurons and neural stem differentiation. He completed post-doctoral fellowships first at the Karolinska Institutet and then at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, working in neural and pluripotent stem cells and chromatin.

Prof. Castelo-Branco started his research group in 2012 at Karolinska Institutet, focusing on the molecular mechanisms regulating the epigenomic states of oligodendrocyte lineage cells in neuroinflammatory and demyelinating diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS), using technologies such as single cell and spatial transcriptomics and epigenomics, among others. His research group has identified novel distinct oligodendroglia cell states in development and multiple sclerosis, including distinct disease-associated states, found that oligodendroglia is already primed at an epigenomic level at immune genes, to allow their transcription in neuroinflammatory environments, and developed new single-cell and spatial epigenomics technologies.

Prof. Castelo- Branco has received many prestigious honours/awards, including being elected member of the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet from 2023, Distinguished Professor within Medicine and Health of the Swedish Research Council (from 2024), Wallenberg Scholar (from 2024), the Hans Wigzell prize 2022, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Göran Gustafsson Prize 2021 in Medicine, the Eric K. Fernström Prize 2021, the Swedish Society for Medical Research (SSMF) 100 years Jubileum Prize 2019 and European Research Council Consolidator (2015) and Advanced Grants (2023).