Douglas Kazutoshi Sato meets with research groups from the University of Pennsylvania to develop new projects in collaboration
Photo: personal archive
In work mission at the University of Pennsylvania (UPENN), in the United States, professor and researcher from PUCRS’s School of Medicine Douglas Kazutoshi Sato had meetings to set in motion projects in collaboration between the universities and research in neurosciences. The professor spent nine days in the partner institution, through the Capes PrInt Program, linked to the Priority Theme “Health in Human Development”.
The researcher’s visit to the United States originated from a collaboration among researchers from UPENN and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), the first American children’s hospital and a benchmark in high complexity illnesses in the country. The Universities have projects in collaboration in neurosciences, with a focus on neuroinflammation and on demyelinating diseases of the central nervous system with researchers Brenda Banwell and Amit Bar-Or, with co-authored papers published in high-impact international journals, such as Neurology and Lancet Neurology.
This year, a new paper was published on the new diagnostic criteria of MOGAD – Mog-IgG associated disease, which led to other new projects in partnership between the institutions. With this, Sato met with research groups in neurosciences, both from UPENN and CHOP, to align activities in new collaborative projects with illnesses such as pediatric and adult multiple sclerosis, MOGAD, neuromyelitis optica spectrum (NMOSD), among others.
During the mission, the PUCRS professor went to the research laboratories with equipment directed at precision medicine in the field of immunology, as well as outpatient clinics and areas for the treatment of pediatric and adult patients. In addition, a meeting was held with Perelman School of Medicine’s Center for Global Health, where they discussed the kinds of agreements the institutions would be mutually interested in and the limitations of each modality, like the exchange of researchers and undergraduate and graduate students.
According to Sato, the universities are in consultation phase for the signing of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to formalize the agreement between the medicine schools. “In the future, I hope other schools can have similar agreements for the exchange of researchers and students, in addition to research,” concluded the professor.
