Affiliation: University of Porto, Porto, Portugal, i3S - Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde

Dr. Tiago L Duarte is a researcher at the ‘Basic and Clinical Research on Iron Biology’ Group of i3S - Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde (Porto, Portugal). He received his PhD from the University of Leicester (UK) in 2007. For his PhD, he studied the so-called ‘non-antioxidant’ roles of vitamin C, including its ability to modulate iron-dependent genotoxicity and gene expression in human skin cells. After obtaining his PhD, he joined the laboratory of Prof. Maria de Sousa at the IBMC - Institute for Molecular and Cell Biology (Porto, Portugal) as Research Assistant to develop research on iron overload disorders. His work demonstrated the crucial role of NRF2, the coordinator of the cellular antioxidant response, in the protection of murine hepatocytes and liver against iron toxicity, and more recently the contribution of NRF2 to systemic iron homeostasis via the regulation of BMP6/hepcidin.