Marília Cascalho was born on the 24th of August 1962 in Lisboa.  Dr. Cascalho  is known to have discovered together with Dr. Wabl that mismatch repair co-opts introduction of mutations in the immunoglobulin genes, thus promoting antibody affinity maturation and by having created a genetically engineered mouse that produces only a few different antibodies, called the Quasi-monoclonal mouse.  

More recently she has pioneered the concept that  diverse B cells and diverse immunoglobulin promote the development of a diverse T cell repertoire. Her main research areas are immunological memory, B cell dependent T cell development and function, somatic hypermutation and mechanisms to generate genome diversity.  To do these studies, Dr Cascalho and her team produced genetically engineered mice that have constrained antibody production (the Quasi-monoclonal mouse and its derivatives).  To elucidate how B cells and immunoglobulin promote the development of T cells the team also studies the T cell repertoire and T cell responses in children that were thymectomized in infancy and in thymectomized mice. 

Dr. Cascalho is currently an assistant professor of Surgery, Immunology and Pediatrics at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, where she has been since 1999. She obtained a medical degree at the University of Lisbon, School of Medicine in 1986 and did her internship in the Hospital de Santa Maria (Lisbon).  In 1989 Marília Cascalho went to the Hagedorn Research Laboratory in Denmark  as a recipient of a Juvenile Diabetes foundation fellowship during which she contributed to the identification of the glutamic Acid decarboxylase as a diabetes autoantigen.

In 1990 she moved to the United States to the University of California at San Francisco where she did doctoral  (Ph.D awarded in 1998) and post-doctoral work with Dr. Matthias Wabl.  She has authored or co-authored a total of 44 scientific papers and has authored a number of patents. Marília Cascalho says her long-term goals are "to discover, to discover, to discover".
 
She has already been invited to return to Portugal to an independent position without funds. She has not accepted because of the isolation and because it was a start-up that did not had any guarantees of continued funds.
 
AWARDS

1999 Science Prize for Young Investigators, Marília Cascalho was the European regional winner for her thesis work at University of California "Mismatch Repair and Somatic Hypermutation--A Tale of a Double-Edged Sword,"

cascalho.marilia at mayo.edu