Brazil follows a steady path that has conducted it to produce 2.02% of the scientific articles in the world. The country is in the 15th position in a ranking headed by the United States followed by China, and having surpassed Switzerland (1.89%) and Sweden (1.81%), approaching from Nederland (2.66%). Brazil is growing four times more than other countries in the manufacturing of scientific knowledge.
The perspectives to the Brazilian universities and the scientific community are good and demonstrate several advancements. The Growth Acceleration Program (PAC) shall invest US$ 24.7 billions in Sciences up to the end of 2010, and it fixes the goal to raise the participation of companies up to 0.65% of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product), and the general investment in the sector to 1.5%. Besides of stimulating the researches in strategic areas such as biofuel, medications, national defense and nuclear program, it foresees a support to the sciences teaching and promotion of social development.
The scientific initiation has contributed to the increase in the production of scientific articles in the country. The most studied areas are: Medicine, where the country is leader in the worldwide production, followed by Physics and Chemistry. According to Guimarães, in 2007, a Brazilian article on neuroscience was the most quoted among the scientific community, and the São Paulo University has the most quoted article in the world on the area of internal medicine.
Brazilian Government stimulates the development of scientific researches by supporting some entities such as CNPq (National Council to the Scientific and Technological Development) and Finep (Funding for Studies and Projects) from the Ministry of Science and Technology.
The Ministry together with CNPq1 is selecting research projects that contribute to the advancement of the knowledge and in generating products that grant subsidies to the formulation, implementation and assessment of public actions driven to the Clinic Genetic at the Unique Health System – SUS.
The approved proposals will receive funding in an estimated amount of US$ 3.61 millions that comes from the Health Sector Funding. The edict comprises research and development projects focusing the following themes: mental disabilities; inborn abnormalities; parental cancer; inborn diseases; inborn metabolism errors. Each proposal approved shall set the maximum execution term of 36 months, and it will receive up to US$ 180 thousand to be implemented.
Finep launched the 2010 national edict for economical subvention amounting US$ 301 millions. These resources will support innovation projects developed by national companies in six strategic areas: information and communication technologies, energy, biotechnology, health, defense, and social development. In the biotechnology area, for instance, it will be supported projects with innovations in bioproducts for application in agriculture, genetically modified plants destined to control plagues and diseases and adaptation to adverse conditions to the industrial cultures; nitrogen fixation in grass and Leguminous. It includes development of bioproducts for application in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry using active principles and essences withdrawn from the Brazilian biodiversity and contemplating the fast diagnosis of infectious, degenerative and genetic diseases.
Concerning to the Health, projects aiming the development of devices to be used in human health, with emphasis on implantable devices: pacemakers, cardioverter defibrillator, cochlear with electric generator and hip and knee prosthesis, added to health equipments destined to: image diagnosis; in vitro diagnosis; hemodialysis and accessories; individual sound amplification; refrigerated centrifuge for blood bags; freezer / extra low temperature conserver for samples and vaccines. It includes innovations for tests and assessment of safety and performance in electrical devices, in molecules and processes that contribute to the development of the national production of active pharmaceutical and medical inputs to be used to treat infectious, degenerative and genetic diseases.
Other areas such as Information and Communication Technologies, Energy, Defense and Social Development will also receive support to projects that allow developing innovative products and services.
Brazilian hospitals also produce scientific knowledge
Incor – Heart Institute is a public hospital of high complexity linked to a College, which is specialized in cardiology, pneumology and cardiac and thoracic surgeries. Besides of being an attendance pole, the Heart Institute is also outstanding as a big research and teaching center.
The hospital is part of Hospital das Clínicas de São Paulo and a field for teaching and researching connected to the Medicine College of the São Paulo University – USP. In order to keep its excellence, the Institute counts on the financial support from the Zerbini Foundation, a non-profitable private entity.
On September 2010, once again Incor had a majoritary institutional representativeness at the Congress of the Brazilian Society of Cardiology held in Belo Horizonte – MG. With the medical, nursing, and nutrition areas, Incor was responsible by the presentation of 47 scientific high quality works.
The Coffee-Heart Research Center, for instance, presented in that Congress two studies on the impact of the regular coffee intake on the hypertension and other metabolism components, such as cholesterol and glycemia. The good news is that the coffee intake does not represent a significant alteration on any of those parameters for the cardiovascular health, according to the study whose methodology was worldwide unpublished.
By its turn, the MASS – Medicine Angioplasty Surgery Study team presented results of a 10 year study – MASS II aiming to assess what would be the best therapy to the coronary artery diseases: clinical treatment (only intervention of medication), angioplasty or cardiac surgery. A recent issue made by the Circulation magazine published an article on the MASS II research. Results were considered of high relevance, and it deserved an editorial of that magazine.
The ten year analysis MASS II concluded that the mortality rate is quite similar among the three groups of patients – clinical, angioplasty and surgery – being around 1.5% per year. Data that drew the attention of the coordinator of the study was that from 42% of patients of the clinical group who in a first analysis would be indicated to the surgery were not submitted to it, and after all, they did not present any kind of cardiac complication along the ten year period. It is a quite high rate that shows the indication to the surgery must not be the first choice for the treatment.
Among the studies presented by Incor in the diagnosis area, it is an unpublished research that redefines the Calcium score to remove the immediate cardiac risk in situations of cardiologic emergency. The calculation of the amount of Calcium into the coronary arteries is a state-of-the-art examination considered by the Medicine one of the more precise indicators for cardiac risk.
The popularization of such examination has made several emergency services and clinics around the world to use such indicator to remove the hypothesis of imminent infarction or angina in patients with thoracic pain. Under this situation, the physician very often identifies a low or null Calcium score as if there was no possibility of a severe problem. If such interpretation is correct for great part of patients, at least for 20% of them, however, it may be fatal. This is what was shown in the study performed by Incor together with research centers of nine countries published in the February issue of JACC – Journal of American College of Cardiology. Same as Incor, many other Brazilian health institutions are developing researches for the treatment of diseases and to improve the quality of life of every person.
Brazil is the cradle of great personalities of the Medicine
Adib Domingos Jatene
Thoracic surgeon, college professor and scientist, Dr. Adib Domingos Jatene is internationally known and respected. Besides of dozens of innovations in the medical area, he was inventor of a heart surgery that carries his name to treat the transposition of the big arteries in newborns and of the first artificial heart-lung of the Hospital das Clínicas.
He actuated as State Health Secretary, and it was for two times Ministry of Health. He is member of the National Medical Academy, General Director for the Heart Hospital and Head Professor of Thoracic Surgery of the USP College of Medicine from 1983 to 1999.
Euclides de Jesus Zerbini
Euclides de Jesus Zerbini and his team became internationally recognized after accomplishing the first heart transplantation in Brazil in 1968, only six months after the pioneer transplant accomplished by the South African surgery Christian Barnard. With 73 year old (in 1985) already counting on anti-rejection medications, he was once again a pioneer, performing the first heart transplant in a patient bearer of the Chagas Disease. In his 58 year carrier, Dr. Zerbini received 125 honorary titles and several homages from governments all over the world. He attended 314 medical congresses and performed personally or through his team more than forty thousand cardiac surgeries working non-stop a few months before he died.
Ivo Hélcio Jardim de Campos Pitanguy
Considered the most famous Brazilian plastic surgeon, Ivo Hélcio Jardim de Campos Pitanguy is also one of the best in the world. At the end of the 40’s, after studying outside the country, Dr. Pitanguy came back to Brazil and created the Surgery Service at Santa Casa de Misericordia do Rio de Janeiro, the first to make hand surgery in the South America, where he attended destitute persons and victims of deformities. Between 1950 and 1951, in Paris, France, he was visiting fellow of Marc Iselin, one of the creators of the hand surgery and reference in attending mutilated persons from the Second World War II. Back to Brazil, in 1954 he headed the Plastic and Repairing Surgery Service at Santa Casa de Misericórdia do Rio de Janeiro. In 1960, he created the post graduation course of plastic surgery of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro integrated to the hospital’s ward. The course formed 45 classes, about 500 surgeons from more than 40 countries. In 1963 he founded his own clinic that became excellence center in esthetic and reconstructive plastic surgery. There, Professor Pitanguy supervises a team of plastic surgeons in tune with his techniques and philosophy.
Sources:
Agência BrasilMinistry of the Science and Technology
Press Assistance of Incor-HCFMUSP
Mayana Zatz
Mayana Zatz is a Brazilian molecular biologist and geneticist. Famous researcher in human genetics, with contributions mainly in the field of neuromuscular diseases (muscular dystrophy, spastic paraplegia, amyotrophic side sclerosis) which she pioneers; presently she is performing relevant researches in the field of trunk-cells.
Mayana Zatz was born in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1947. She spent part of her childhood in France, and in 1955 she moved to Brazil. Between 1975 and 1977 she made a post graduation at University of California (United States) and upon returning to Brazil in 1981, she founded the Brazilian Association of Muscular Dystrophy that treats persons affected by muscular dystrophies and where she still is the director.
In 1995 she pioneered the locating of the genes linked to a kind of limb dystrophy, mapping the gen responsible by the Knobloch syndrome. In 2000 she was distinguished with the Brazilian Great-Cross of the National order of Scientific Merit, also receiving the Scientific and Technological Merit Medal from the São Paulo State Government. In 2001, she received in Paris the Latin-American award of the L’Oréal-UNESCO for women in sciences. She was nominated the 2006 Science Personality of the Year, according to the Magazine ISTOÉ Gente. In 2009 she won the Mexico Award of Science and Technology 2008. In September of that same year, Mayana won the Walter Schmidt Award granted by the company Fanem for outstanding personalities who promoted the development to the Brazilian health sector.
Miguel Nicolelis
Internationally recognized Brazilian physician and scientist, Miguel Nicolelis was considered one of the 20 greatest scientists in the world at the beginning of the last decade, according to the “Scientific American” magazine. In his specialty, neurobiology, he is in first place. An important magazine considered him one of the 100 more influent Brazilian persons in 2009. Nicolelis was the first scientist to receive from the American institution in the same year the Pioneer and Transformative R01, and the first Brazilian to have an article published on the cover of the Science magazine.
He headed a group of researchers who pioneered recorded the simultaneous activity of 700 neurons, and became famous for making monkeys to control robotic arms using their brains. Today, he commands revolutionary studies – as the ones that suggest an underground link between different illness like Parkinson and schizophrenia, besides of studies suggesting how the genesis of the hunger feeling and the satiety in the brain is.
He heads a group of researches in the area of Neuroscience at University Duke (Durham, United States) that studies attempts to integrate the human brain to machinery (neuroprosthesis or brain-machine interfaces). The purpose of these researches is to develop neural prosthesis aiming to rehabilitate patients suffering from body paralysis. Nicolelis is responsible by the discovery of a system that allows creating robotic arms controlled by means of brain signals. His work is on the list of the Massachusetts Technology Institute (MIT) as one of the technologies that will change the world.