Acknowledgements

I have crossed many people during my stay in Germany and during the realization of this thesis and to all of them I am thankful for different reasons.

First of all I would like to specially thank Prof. Dr. Ana Zenclussen, my supervisor and sister, who supported me from the very beginning of this experience in a foreign country and culture. Most especially I would like to thank her for her scientific and personal support, and for helping me not to loose my faith when things were not working out as expected. I am also very grateful to Prof. Dr. Hans-Dieter Volk for accepting me in his very nice Institute, for being so supportive and for always coming out with new ideas and suggestions. To Dr. Thomas Ritter I would like to specially thank for his support at the beginning of this thesis. I am also thankful to Prof. Dr. Hoffmann, for being my “Doktorvater”, and allowing me to do my thesis at the Humboldt University.

I would like to thank the Charité for financially supporting me with a fellowship and to my current financial supporter, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. I am also thankful to the institutions that supported me the attendance to congresses: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Immunologie, European Federation of Immunological Societies, GlaxoSmithKline Stiftung, as well as Prof. Zenclussen, Prof. Volk and Dr. Ritter. Especially thankful am I to the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation, who supported my stay in Portugal for learning the in vitro fertilization technique at the Instituto Gulbekian de Ciencia.

In a personal and scientific way, I am especially thankful to Pablo Casalis, my husband, friend and lab partner, for joining me in this experience and for his unconditional support. Thanks for coming to Germany, for your love, for giving me the strength I needed to finally finishing this thesis, and for your invaluable help in the lab.

To the members of the Reproductive Immunology Group I am more than grateful. I had the opportunity to know every member of it, from the beginning, and I am thankful to all of them. My special thanks go to Dr. Annarosa Zambon Bertoja and to Dr. Andre Sollwedel, with whom I struggled the first years of this thesis. Thanks for your help and kindness. To the more recent and not so recent members of the group, Paul Wafula, Ana Teles, Dr. Milan Popovic and Steffen Paeschke, I am very grateful for the joy they brought to the lab, and for unforgettable moments shared in Opatija. To Catharina Thüre, thanks for her willingness to always help and her kindness. To Paul Wafula, also thanks for his help and kindness. To Nadja Ahmad, thanks for her friendship and for being so kind and generous. Also thanks to Ivonne Wollenberg, for sharing with me the passion for HO-1 and for not letting me being the only crazy one about it.

To the other members of the Institute of Medical Immunology, thanks for their support and suggestions. I am especially thankful to Katrin Vogt and Heinz Tanzmann, as well as to Dr. Martina Seifert and Dr. Katja Kotsch.

I am also very thankful to Prof. Miguel Soares from the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia, for letting me go to his Institute and use his precious knockouts. Thanks for so many suggestions and new ideas, and for being such an inspiration of what the love for science is about. To the members of the Inflammation Group I would like to thank for their kindness and warmth, and for making me feel welcomed from the very beginning. Special thanks to Sofia Rebelo, for helping me so much during my stay there, and for being such a nice person.

To the members of the Neurosurgery group, thanks for letting us use parts if his lab, as well as to the Experimental Oncology group, thanks for letting us use so many devices. Special thanks to Dr. Stefan Fest, for being so kind and generous.

Finally, I would like to thank to the rest of my family back home, for their support through so many phone calls and e-mails, and for encouraging me not to abandon in the middle of the way. Although I´ve missed you so much during this time, you always tried to make me feel home everywhere I hear your voices. Gracias!