About the Program

Registered at the Ministry of Education since 1975, the Pathology Program really originated from researchers training experience since the São Paulo Surgery Medical School was first created in 1912. At that time, this specialization was just beginning in the whole world and one of its missions was to give a scientific meaning to medicine and advance knowledge about diseases through research.

The program was initially named Anatomy and Pathological Histology and was led by foreign professors such as the Austrian and first professor, Walter Haberfeld and the Italian Alexandre Donatti, founder member of General Pathology. They brought the European expertise of modern pathology founded by Rudolf Virchow. Years later, in 1920, an agreement with the Rockefeller Foundation brought the Americans Oscar Klotz and Robert Archibald Lambert who, under the professorship of Ludgero da Cunha Motta, established the area profile for several decades, with a strong propensity towards research, in addition to activities applied in the diagnosis field.

At that time, several doctoral thesis were produced within the scope of the Pathology Department, training specialists and researchers of Brazilian reference during the period. A new professor assumes in 1958, Constantino Mignone, who implemented anatomical-clinical meetings, an important step towards the interdisciplinary and multiprofessional culture which supports the postgraduate scientific production of our doctorate program until today. During the course of the university reform implementation and under the influence of the Sucupira Report, the pathologist Thales de Brito, with solid research background on pathology of tropical diseases, took over in 1972. Shortly afterwards, in 1975, the Pathology Program was accredited by CAPES to offer master’s and doctoral degrees under the new National guidelines for postgraduate studies and under the coordination of Carlos Eduardo Pereira Corbett.

Initially, only physicians specialized in areas of the Pathology Department had access to these levels of training. This prerequisite was broken with the arrival of the notorious researcher and pathologist György Miklós Böhm who, on assuming the coordination of the Pathology Program, allowed inscriptions of doctors of any specialty, thus propitiating a research environment open to innovation and impact discoveries in the medical field as a whole. From this memorable moment, new leaders emerged from the most diverse medical areas besides pathology itself, such as radiology, anesthesia, medical clinic and surgery, still playing a fundamental role in conducting research in the country and in the world.

The next move, taken by Gregorio Santiago Montes, outlined the Pathology Program profile until nowadays. He coordinated the postgraduate program between 1988 and 1997. Because of the work, which was idealized and conducted by him, not only the Pathology Program but also all programs of the University of Sao Paulo Medical School adopted a norm to include students from all professional areas among their master and doctoral students. Consequently, this action contributed that research be the result of a true interaction between interdisciplinary and multiprofessional fields, leading to a profitable intellectual, original and innovative production and impact to the whole area knowledge.

The Pathology Doctoral Program aims to train researchers and teachers capable of producing advances in the different interfaces provided by the study of diseases. Because of this mission, the Pathology Program values admission of students from different areas of knowledge to carry out their doctorates under the guidance of our professors in their lines of research, no longer worrying about professional restriction, but instead encouraging interdisciplinarity capable of generating new knowledge. This established tendency of the program is a recognition of its great driving force. In addition, the Pathology Program greatly values and encourages the student-coordinator relationship, encouraging those decisions and paths pursued by this binomial and suffering little interference from the coordination or departmental and institutional organs.

The Pathology Program relies on basic methodological training disciplines and advanced disciplines in lines of research. Among the methodological disciplines, two groups stand out, namely: 1) those aiming to steady the postgraduate in statistical basis, study design and epidemiological bases; 2) those who instruct and train doctoral students in advanced laboratory techniques, giving them tools for their projects.

In the advanced disciplines of specific lines of research, teachers conduct classes and supervise discussion of topics about the state-of-the-art in their areas, involving recent works, many of which authorship of the teachers themselves and their research group. Students are also encouraged to pursue some disciplines in other postgraduate programs in order to provide greater interdisciplinarity.

The discipline on Ethical, Methodological and Management Bases in Clinical Research has been totally offered at distance to postgraduate students of several masters and doctoral programs of the University of São Paulo. This proved to be a successful experience both for allowing participation of various campuses without the need to travel to the city, and the fact that it reunites students with different visions in the field of research, propitiating exercise of interdisciplinarity and launching potential contributions among the participants by approaching them through this way.

The Pathology Program collaborates with weekly videoconferences, under the form of anatomy-clinical discussion, with necropsy transmitted in real time to other medical schools in Brazil. This group has a page on the website of the University of São Paulo Medical School called “Telepathology” (www.med.fm.usp.br/telepatologia). This collection aims to contribute to the teaching-learning pathology, and is part of an initiative to build and test Distance Learning techniques.

In the Telemedicine discipline, students attend classes through Adobe Connect platform via internet and teachers monitor and evaluate them by communicating through web conferencing resources and MOODLE platform discussion list.

The Pathology Program is composed of a complex of 10 research laboratories:

1. Laboratory of Medical Informatics.
2. Laboratory of Laboratory Medicine.
3. Laboratory of Experimental Atmospheric Pollution.
4. Laboratory of Investigation in Liver Pathology.
5. Laboratory of Cardiovascular Pathology.
6. Laboratory of Research on Immunodeficiency.
7. Laboratory of Pathology of Infectious Diseases.
8. Laboratory of Cell Biology.
9. Laboratory on Forensic Medicine.
10. Laboratory of Pathophysiology of Aging.

They give direct support to activities of the Doctoral Pathology Program of the University of São Paulo Medical School and two divisions of FMUSP Hospital das Clínicas:

• Central Laboratory Division
• Division of Pathological Anatomy.

In addition to the provision of diagnostic services for care activities, these divisions support part of the research not only in the Pathology Program, but also in almost all programs of the Medical School of USP, as they have sophisticated sections of Microbiology, Hematology and Cytology, Biochemistry and Hormones, Immunology and Serology, Parasitology, Molecular Biology and Pathological Anatomy.

Doctoral projects resources derive mainly from development agencies and budgets of institutions, as follows: FAPESP, CNPq, FINEP, Faculty of Medicine Foundation, Hospital das Clínicas of FMUSP and University of São Paulo. More recently, we receive resources and the support of MCT/CNPq in projects of the Millennium Institutes and the National Institutes of Science and Technology.