Helena Branco holds a BSc degree in Biochemistry from the Faculty of Sciences and the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of Porto (FCUP/ICBAS-UP) since 2019. During her last BSc year, she performed a curricular internship under the supervision of Prof. Doctor Susana Sousa (i3S/INEB) and co-supervision of Prof. Doctor Paula Gomes (LAQV/REQUIMTE), with a research project entitled "Role of SPARC's peptide 2.3 on endothelial and prostate cancer cells". In 2020, Helena joined the Cancer Drug Resistance (CDR) group at i3S, having been selected for a Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) "Verão com Ciência" research fellowship (BI) under the program "Interdisciplinary approaches to control infectious diseases and cancer". Her work, entitled "The relevance of Chitinase-3-like-1 on pancreatic cancer cellular response to gemcitabine plus nab-paclitaxel", was conducted at the CDR group (i3S/IPATIMUP) under the supervision of Doctor Cristina Xavier (i3S) and co-supervision of Prof. Doctor M. Helena Vasconcelos (i3S, FFUP).

In 2021, Helena concluded her MSc degree in Oncology at ICBAS-UP. Her MSc dissertation, entitled "Studying the chemosensitizing effect of Pirfenidone in non-small cell lung cancer cell lines", was performed at the CDR group (i3S/IPATIMUP) under the supervision of Doctor Cristina Xavier (i3S) and co-supervision of Prof. Doctor M. Helena Vasconcelos (i3S, FFUP) and Prof. Doctor Lúcio Lara Santos (IPO-Porto, ICBAS-UP). Later that year, Helena was selected for a 6-month research fellowship (BI) within the FCT project "Circulating Tumor Extracellular Vesicles for minimally-invasive detection of Minimal Residual Disease in Acute Myeloid Leukemia patients" (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-0304570) at the CDR group, i3S. 

In 2022, Helena was granted a FCT funded PhD research fellowship to perform her PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences (FFUP) under the supervision of Prof. Doctor M. Helena Vasconcelos (i3S/FFUP) and co-supervision of Doctor Cristina Xavier (i3S) and Professor Doctor Chiara Riganti (University of Turin).