Michael Spyer
Honorary Member, The Physiological Society

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.97.19

2–6 August 2014, Iguassu Falls, Brazil

The award of the 2014 International Lecture to me was both an honour and surprise. I was delighted to have the opportunity to renew old friendships in Brazil and to travel to places that I had not previously visited. These visits would allow me to learn more of how physiological sciences are developing in Brazil and allow me to promote The Physiological Society. The Society was also eager for me to represent it at the PANAM 2014 Congress, the first meeting that had been organised for physiological societies from south, central and north America.

Brazil holds a very real interest for me. In the 1970s in Birmingham Pedro Guertzenstein from Sao Paulo had spent time in Sidney Hilton’s laboratory and around that time I had also met Osvaldo Lopes from the same Brazilian lab in Eric Neil’s laboratory. Whilst having rather different scientific views, we had become good friends. Pedro was followed by Henrique Futuro Neto who studied for his PhD in John Coote’s lab developing a longstanding collaboration with Mike Gilbey that continued when Mike joined my Department at the Royal Free. From that beginning several young Brazilian physiologists passed through my London lab and in particular Karla Sampaio spent a period working on vagal preganglionic neurons in London. A significant collaboration developed between my lab and Vitoria, with the support of CAPES (the Brazilian Governments Funding Agency), the British Council and the Wellcome Trust, that facilitated exchanges.

This lecture tour represented my fifth visit to Brazil and began in Sao Paulo. My host at the Federal University was Thiago dos Santos Moreira, currently the President of the Brazilian Physiological Society. Thiago and Vagner Attunes, the treasurer of the PANAM Meeting and IUPS2017, gave me a good introduction to their labs. They are in an international competitive department and are well funded with significant funds being available from Sao Paulo State. It is a major centre for cardio-respiratory research, which is a major interest in Brazil. This is in no small measure through the importance of Benedito Machado (Ribiero Preto) who is Brazil’s leading physiologist and the mentor of the majority of Brazil’s young and accomplished physiologists. I had a lively audience for my lecture and had numerous engaging discussions.

I then travelled to Vitoria where my hosts were Henrique Futuro Neto and Karla Sampaio. The Federal University has developed greatly since my last visit and there has been a growing level of support from the national government. However resources are still much less than in Sao Paulo State. However the labs are very active and the department was full of enthusiastic students and post-docs. I had a very full academic visit that was supplemented by a wonderful social programme that allowed me to visit the countryside and get a feeling for the amazing variety of vegetation. The hospitality was excellent and I wished that I could have had longer to really understand the changes occurring.

The next part of the tour was PANAM 2014. Karla and her colleagues accompanied me from Vitoria, worried that alone I would have failed to negotiate the various airports en route. We arrived in Iguassu Falls with a day for exploration before the meeting began. The Falls are truly amazing and like most of the participants, I took a boat ride to the falls leaving looking like a drowned sheep. All the other Brits at the meeting experienced the same soaking. We also visited the neighbouring bird sanctuary. The meeting, entitled ‘Physiology without borders’, was attended by around 1,000 delegates of whom approximately 60% were students. The Society’s two journals sponsored four symposia within the meeting, which was organised in a manner similar to IUPS 2013. The Society also provided financial support for several UK scientists. Bene Machado and his organising committee had done a really good job and the meeting was a huge success. There are now plans for this to become a regular regional meeting.

The next meeting will not be until after IUPS 2017, probably in 2019, and it is likely to be held in Chile, which was well-represented at the current meeting. I was gratified that The Society’s contribution was appreciated to the extent that as The Society’s representative I was included in discussions about the future of the meeting. The American Physiological Society was also very well-represented and has and will give strong support for the planned continuation of the initiative. Bene and his team gave strong evidence that even without the financial muscle and organisational support that is a strength of The Physiological Society they have the ability to cope with the difficulties that come with organising international meetings. I hope that IUPS will give them the support that they need to ensure the success of IUPS 2017 by allowing them the flexibility to limit the size and scope of the meeting to what they feel comfortable to offer.

The meeting lasted for four days and I gave a talk in a symposium organised by Thiago and Dr Daniel Mulkey (USA) entitled ‘New advances in the neural control of breathing’ which was sponsored by The Journal of Physiology. Experimental Physiology sponsored a further three symposia.
Following the meeting I travelled to the north east of Brazil. This was the first occasion that I have gone so far north and it was an exciting opportunity to learn how the reforms in education and social policy initiated by the previous President of Brazil, Dr Lula, had affected physiological teaching and research. It proved to be a revealing visit.

My first stop was in Recife where I was hosted by Carol Leandro and Joao Henrique da Silva Costa of the Federal University of Pernambuco. This is a relatively poor state and the reforms have led to a major expansion of education including the establishment of new universities in deprived areas. The university has a major campus in Recife and a second some one-hour’s drive inland. The Department of Physiology is situated within an Institute of Public Health as well as having links to biomedical sciences. There is an emphasis on research into obesity which is a major national problem as in most western societies. Joao provides a physiological approach to understanding the relationship between obesity and cardiovascular disease. Carol is a leading player in major international programmes studying obesity and its social impact. Their labs were well-developed and I was impressed by the students’ and academics’ commitment to the ethos engendered by the reforms. As in every department that I visited in Brazil, the students were enthusiastic and showed genuine interest in discussion on my presentation and their own research.

My trip finished with a drive north to the town of Joao Pessoa in Paraiba State. Here my visit was hosted by Prof Valdir Braga who heads a thriving department in a recently established biotechnology institute in the Federal University of Paraiba. This has been supported by both government and state resources and seeks to develop novel drugs from the wide variety of plants that are unique to Brazil. The emphasis on translation does not detract from the keen determination to develop a strong basic science presence. The institute has already identified two lead compounds that will enter preclinical trials. It was clear from my visit to the north-east that the reforms have had a major impact in both socio-economic terms but also in the recognition of the importance of higher education and research in facilitating these advances. Physiology is clearly playing its part!