Este é um evento online
Introduction
In the last forty years, initially two national research groups, led by professors Aldo AM Lima and Edgar M. Carvalho, developed important lines of research related to tropical medicine, leishmaniasis and diarrheal diseases & malnutrition, at Universidade Federal do Ceará and Bahia, respectively. Subsequently, a third group led by Professor Selma Jerônimo from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, also emerged in the in leishmaniasis theme. From the beginning, these three research groups have maintained relevant and significant international collaboration with international groups led by researchers, Richard L. Guerrant, Warren Johnson, and Lee W. Riley. The development and progress of these research groups led to the aggregation of new researchers and financial support by national research funding agencies, CNPq and CAPES, as well from abroad, such as the National Institute of Health (NIH), Bethesda, MD, and most recently the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The common environment of research related to tropical medicine led to the formatting of the event, Annual Meeting in Tropical Medicine Research Center & Pharmacology. The first meeting took place in mid-March 1996. Figure 1 illustrates only the researchers participating in the II Annual Meeting of the Tropical Medicine Research Center in Salvador, BA, in March-1997. Note researchers Lee W. Riley (1st from left to right), Aldo AM Lima (3rd), Edgar M Carvalho (6th in the first line), Selma Jerônimo (8th in the first line), Richard Pearson, UVa, CHO, VA (1st. On the second line), and Warren Johnson (2nd. On the second line).
Figure 2 shows
the team of speakers, graduate and undergraduate students which attended the XXIII
Tropical Medicine Research Center in December 2019. The longevity of this event is
based mainly on the regional, national and international interaction and
collaboration of researchers interested with lines of research on Tropical
Medicine and Hygiene & Pharmacology. This network has engedered a fruitful
scientific and technological production, allowing the training of human
resources at postgraduate, graduate, and technical level. Over this period were
developed two international research agreements between UFBA & University
of Cornell and UFC, UFRGN & University of Virginia, which today constitute international scientific and
technological cooperation models for several other national and international
institutions. As a result of the promotion of these annual and regular
meetings, it was developed two INCTs, Biomedicine and Immunology of Tropical
Diseases, and two research networks, RECODISA (www.recodisa.ufc.br) and MAL-ED
(www.mal-ed.fnih.org), nationally and internationally. The list of participants
in these events and today formed through national and international graduate
programs as evidenced in the leaders' CVs lattes, demonstrates the training
capacity of human resources that had directly or indirectly promoted these
annual and regular meetings of the Tropical Medicine
Research Center. Leading researchers were recognized by national and international
societies such as the Brazilian Society of Tropical Medicine, the American
Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, ASTMH and the Brazilian Academy of
Sciences, ABC. The quality of this training can be realized by the fact that
the majority, > 80% of graduates, are now researchers and / or professors
from national and / or international institutions. It is important to mention
that these international collaborations has been essential for the
international insertion of our graduate programs. The quality of this academic
exchange was recognized by the CAPES, principal Brazilian agency dedicated for
the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel, which aproved the project “Internationalization
of the Federal University of Ceará in Translational and Epidemiological
Research in NeuroGastroenterology”, according the therms of the International
Collaboration Program CAPES-PRINT (2018-2022), recently renowned for the next
three years. By the way, it allowed to expand the academic exchange
of the Federal University of Ceará to the Queen
Mary University of London with Prof. Daniel Sifrim, a
world-renowned expert on esophageal motility, as well as to the University of Liverpool with Prof.
David Criddle, a lecturer on molecular physiology &
cell signaling
with long-standing interest on calcium and ROS roles in acute pancreatitis.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the event was interrupted. In 2022, the XXIV Tropical Medicine Research Center & Pharmacology and III International Symposium in Neurogastroenterology and Motility will be resumed, this time via Internet, allowing a broader attendance. As one can see in the preliminary program, the event is structured as usual, i.e. with sessions dedicated to major public health problems, with lecture by scholars and oral presentations by graduate students followed by discussion with the audience.
