Contribution to cancer research

Ricardo Renzo Brentani, FAPESP’s executive president, receives Octavio Frias de Oliveira Award for "Outstanding Personality".

By Fábio de Castro

Agência FAPESP – Ricardo Renzo Brentani, FAPESP’s executive president, received the 2nd Octavio Frias de Oliveira Award for “Outstanding Personality” on August 5, 2011. Sponsored by the São Paulo Cancer Institute (Icesp), in partnership with Folha publishing group, the award aims to recognize new knowledge on cancer prevention and treatment.

For the “Oncology Research” category, the award was also granted to José Barreto Campello Carvalheira and Guilherme Zweig Rocha, all of the Molecular Oncology Laboratory housed within the Medical Sciences School at  Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp).

The award ceremony was attended by Brazil’s leading science personalities, including Isaias Raw, president of Butantan Foundation Technical-Scientific Council, and Eduardo Moacyr Krieger, professor emeritus at Ribeirão Preto Medical School at Universidade de São Paulo (USP - Ribeirão Preto).

In the first category, the award was chosen by a jury comprised of Icesp members and Folha de S. Paulo newspaper representatives, in addition to scientists and members of society committed to the issue, who chose from seven nominees. In the second category, the jury chose from more than 20 entries submitted over two months.

Brentani, executive president of A.C. Camargo Cancer Hospital and coordinator of the Antonio Prudente Center for Research and Treatment of Cancer, one of FAPESP’s Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (CEPIDs). He was also director of the Ludwig Cancer Research Institute.

A member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC), the doctor graduated from the USP Medical School (FMUSP), where he holds the title of professor emeritus. He completed his doctorate in biochemistry, also at FMUSP. As a researcher, he works mainly on studies related to the role of the nucleus in processing mRNA, the characterization of collagen and cellular adhesion and metastasis.

He has received several awards and prizes, like the Brazilian Grand-Cross of the National Order of Scientific Merit, the National Academy of Medicine’s Costa Junior Award and the Fundação Conrado Wessel’s Science and Culture Prize.

“If I have any merit that justifies my nomination for the prize, I must share it with my wife, Maria Mitzi Brentani, with Isaias Raw, who taught me to like studying and growing, and with the enormous number of young people who believed in me throughout my career,” Brentani said in his acceptance speech.

According to Roger Chammas, president of the award’s organizing committee,  professor at FMUSP and a member of FAPESP’s coordination team for the Health Area, Brentani was the first full professor in the oncology department at a Brazilian university, USP.

“Every one of us can identify a feature of Bretani’s personality that  befits this award. The professor has been an outstanding manager, academician, educator and creator of institutions. As a former Brentani mentee, I can speak to his role as a bold scientist, who is ahead of his time,” he said.

According to Chammas, in the 1960s at FMUSP, Brentani was already studying the informational capacity of the nucleus, an area that is still little explored.

“In the 1960s and 1970s, he introduced pioneering research in the area currently known as molecular biology,” he underscores.

At the beginning of the 1980s, according to Chammas, Brentani was chosen as the ideal individual to head up a São Paulo arm of the Ludwig Cancer Research Institute.  The institution would soon become a national and international reference for oncological studies and major repository of scientific leadership.

“In this manner, Brentani created varied research groups in the areas of epidemiology, immunology, cellular biology, cancer genetics and genomics, bioinformatics, neurobiology, molecular pathology and a very solid clinical research group. With every group created, Brentani has managed to reinvent himself,” he affirms.

Paulo Hoff, general director at Icesp, director of the Oncology Center at  Sírio-Libanês Hospital and professor of oncology at FMUSP’s Radiology Department, highlighted the fact that Brentani was the first professor of oncology at USP.

“Being the first is always an arduous task. He started the profession of oncology at a time when it was not always accepted in the medical and university communities. His efforts made possible the large capacity that we have today in the area and he was the embryo of everything that we are seeing in terms of cancer research at USP,” he adds.

According to Hoff, FMUSP was given the task of implementing Icesp, and after just three years, the institution became one of the main cancer research centers in São Paulo State.

“We have had great success thanks to the multidisciplinary  and multiprofessional collaboration. Icesp currently serves more than 1,200 new cases of cancer per month, with more than 6,000 surgeries. Monthly, there are more than 13,000 clinical consultations and more than 4,000 chemotherapy sessions,” he affirmed.

New treatments

“All this work in the oncology area at FMUSP and Hospital das Clínicas began with an activity developed by Brentani, who’s major merit was advancing an almost impossible mission: articulating the different, existing clinical and surgical specializations to constitute an oncological center that continued evolving until it kicked off the pilot program which resulted in Icesp,” he affirmed.

Guilherme Afif Domingos, lieutenant governor of São Paulo, highlighted the role that Brentani has played at the helm of FAPESP. According to him, the continuity of the science financing policy, which is guaranteed by allocation of 1% of São Paulo State revenue to the Foundation, explains both São Paulo’s leadership in oncology, the health sector and in scientific research in general.

“No one is a leader by chance. There is always a story behind and it is being recognized in the tributes that are being made here. Research is a long-term project and cannot be interrupted. São Paulo’s leadership is the result of this public investment in science and technological innovation,” he affirms.

Guilherme Zweig Rocha represented a group of researchers recognized in the Oncology Research category. “Our merit lies not in being chosen, but in doing the work. We continue doing this type of study to improve national research and in the future patient care,” he said.

José Barreto Carvalheira and Rocha received awards for their study “Paclitaxel effect on the IRS/PI3-kinase/Akt/mTOR pathway in breast cancer adenocarcinoma and lung cancer carcinoma.”

With a team of researchers, the authors successfully tested a new biochemical pathway for cancer treatment. The study combined Metformin, utilized to treat type 2 diabetes, with paclitaxel, a drug used in chemotherapy patients treating breast and lung cancer. In the in vitro and mice studies, the researchers managed to inhibit tumor growth.
    
In realizing that both paclitaxel and metformin act upon AMPK individually in chemotherapy and diabetes treatment, the researchers decided to combine the medications to treat breast and lung cancer strains. According to the result of the study, the combination of metformin and paclitaxel has an anti-tumoral effect capable of interrupting the cellular cycle of carcinogenic cells. 

Rocha is completing his doctorate at Unicamp’s medical school with a FAPESP fellowship, in a research project under the orientation of Carvalheira. The professor coordinates other projects with FAPESP funding.