Seminar CIBFar – Prof. Dr. Josué de Moraes, 02/March/2016
The diseases caused for helminths occur mainly in the poor social classes, without adequate conditions of housing, work, education, sanitary services. Also known as “diseases of poverty”, these illnesses affect more than 1 billion of people worldwide and are responsible for millions of deaths annually. Unfortunately, treatment options are insufficient, whose scenario aggravated by the indifference of the pharmaceutical industry to develop new drugs for low-income population. In particular, considered a Neglected Disease, schistosomiasis is a helminthiasis of great social impact, and is considered an important public health problem in more than 70 countries. In fact, this disease whose etiologic agents parasitic genus Schistosoma, affects over 200 million people worldwide and about 10 million Brazilians. Whereas praziquantel is the only drug available for the treatment of this disease, they are preponderant activities of research and scientific and technological development aiming at the treatment of schistosomiasis and other helminths. The seminary has as objective to present the challenges for the development of drugs against helminths, using schistosomiasis as model. The approaches and strategies used in the biological evaluation of potential drugs are also within the scope of the presentation.
Prof. Dr. Josué de Moraes
Center for Research in Neglected Diseases, University Guarulhos
Degree in Biological Sciences and Mathematics; Master and PhD in Parasitology from the University of São Paulo. Postdoctoral by the Butantan Institute. Winner of Award “Featured Thesis USP”, Valley-CAPES Award and Honorable Mention in the CAPES Thesis Award in the Biotechnology area. Member of the Editorial Board of PLoS One. Professor at the University Guarulhos (UnG) and Professor at the Graduate Institute of Biomedical Sciences (ICB-USP) and the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences (FCF-USP). He has experience in the area of Biotechnology applied to the Human and Animal Parasitology with emphasis on Helminthology. And scholarship holder of productivity in research of CNPq level 2.