Helena Batatinha

Helena was born and raised in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She attended Mackenzie University and received her B.S. in Exercise Physiology in 2013. She received her M.S. (2015) and PhD (2021) from the University of Sao Paulo, working with Dr. Rosa-Neta at the exercise and immunometabolism laboratory. During her masters, she studied the effects of exercise in obese mice with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.  For her PhD, she coordinated a project aiming to investigate probiotic supplementation for marathon athletes and its implication in the immune system. During the last year of her PhD, she received a grant to study overseas. She then came to the University of Arizona to work with Dr. Katsanis and Dr. Simpson in a project aiming to investigate acute exercise as a strategy to improve the safety and efficacy of donor lymphocyte infusions. Helena defended her doctorate in March 2021 and joined Dr. Simpson’s lab as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in April 2021. Helena currently has two major projects underway: (1) Describing the transcriptional and phenotypic profiles of exercise mobilized lymphocytes in humans and evaluating their ability to reduce leukemic burden and GvHD in xenogeneic mice, and (2) Investigating the rule of exercise in tumor burden immunodeficient mice.