Infectious, Immuno-Inflammatory and Degenerative Diseases
The theme gathers some of most qualified research groups at UFC, which jointly coordinate INCT and PRONEX besides various laboratories with cutting-edge equipment. The excellence of these teams’ work, firmed in more than four decades of activities, goes beyond the strictly academic aspects and, indeed, it has been determinant to qualify the healthcare in the state of Ceará, making the College of Medicine and its associated structures, such as the University Hospital and the Maternity-School, reference centers when it comes to clinic surgical qualification. The projects are articulated with the Industrial and Technological Center of Ceará and FIOCRUZ Ceará. The programs in Pharmacology and Medical Sciences are consolidated as international excellence programs (grade 6) and Surgical Sciences as national excellence (grade 5). The internationalization of the health sciences at UFC traces back to pioneer researchers in the isolation of thermostable Escherichia coli enterotoxin which lead to the investigation on the dynamics of the enteric diseases, malnutrition, microbiome, genome, metabolome and environmental enteropathy, generating knowledge about the morbidity and etiologies of enteric infections, as well as its impacts on the growth and neurocognitive development of children in poor communities. These investigations, accomplished since then, resulted in the creation of the international network, MAL-ED (malnutrition enteric disease) whose main result was the development and the application of a test for molecular biomarkers – carbohydrates – to assess the function of the intestinal barrier. This fact, on its own, shows the international insertion of the institution in this research area. The research accomplished in Neurogastroenterology is one of the axes of the present proposal and a central point of INCT-Biomedicine (http://inct.cnpq.br/web/inct-
