Sofia Moco is a chemical engineer (Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal) and a biochemist (PhD). Since her phD studies, she has been developing metabolomics approaches to study metabolism, through monitoring the dynamics of small molecules / nutrients / drugs / metabolites in various biological systems. She started by studying secondary metabolism in plants, using mass spectrometry (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), during her phD studies at the Biochemistry Laboratory and the Plant Research International, Wageningen University and Research Center, the Netherlands.
She performed a 2-year post-doc at the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland, before joining Nestle Research, Lausanne, Switzerland. She became a Team leader and a Senior Scientist in Metabolomics in 2016. She set-up 2 new laboratories (3 MS and 3 600 MHz NMR) and she built a team to conduct metabolomics research in projects to improving metabolic conditions, such as diabetes, obesity, and ageing, with a particular focus on mitochondrial function and bioenergetics.
She started to work on NAD+ biochemistry in 2016, by developing metabolomics approaches, in the context of metabolic diseases. She led a team that established workflows for the qualitative and quantitative analyses of NAD+ metabolome in in vitro, pre-clinical and clinical studies. She holds expertise in the use of stable isotopes to monitor label incorporation into metabolic intermediates and pathway turnover in vitro and in vivo.
Since May 2021 she joined the VU Amsterdam, the Netherlands, as an Assistant Professor, in the Department of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, part of AIMMS. At the VU, she leads the Cellular Metabolism Lab where she develops research on drug metabolism, NAD+ metabolism, and central metabolism applied to life sciences and nutrition, in NWO- and internationally-funded projects: NWO FERMI, EU-RISK-HUNT3R, Open Philantropy - Snakebite Therapies, TDCC-LSH FAIRify your metabolomics data.
Sofia is a lecturer in various BSc and MSc courses at the VU within the BSc programs Pharmaceutical Sciences (FAR), and Chemistry, as well as MSc programs Drug Discovery Sciences (DDS), Chemistry, and Biomolecular Sciences (BMOL). Since 2024, Sofia became the coordinator the AIMMS Talent Program for MSc students at the VU Amsterdam.
Sofia was a committee member the Young NMC (Netherlands Metabolomics Centre), and since 2025 is a member of the board of the Benelux Metabolomics Center. She is also a member of the HRSMC (Holland Research Scool of Molecular Chemistry). Sofia is an associate editor for metabolomics of the open-access journal Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences.
Find out more about the research interests and activities on the website Cellular Metabolism Lab, and in the AIMMS news piece 'Meet the Scientist'.
