Dr. Paulo Renato Zuquim Antas
Principal Investigator, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, FIOCRUZ, Laboratory of Clinical Immunology
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Dr. Paulo Antas is a Professor of Biology and an Associate Researcher. He completed both MSc and PhD at FIOCRUZ, Brazil, He is also working as Editorial Board member and Reviewer for scientific journals. His wrote Book chapters and e books. In the last 5 years, he has been working in a group that develops research on the field of clinical immune response of vaccinations against human Tuberculosis (TB), especially for cellular immunology area. Most of his scientific time is currently dedicated to study several aspects of immune response in TB, such as the involvement of inflammatory cytokines, and T cells on immune response to mycobacterium as a whole. As a result, he has accumulated significant data and thus experience in this field. He spent time working in projects related to cytokine detection in patients with prior extra pulmonary TB, comparing them to those responses among persons with either pulmonary or latent infection. Therefore, accumulated data have shown defects in resting cytokine production, and have noted lower CD4 counts in HIV-seronegative patients. Primarily, these results provide evidence of defects in innate immune responses and the group published a paper raising the hypothesis of possible genetic predisposition to these immunologic defects. This work in genetics has provided him with yet another laboratory skill set that has been complementing the skills he has gained in TB immunology thus far. In addition, he has been working on innate immune response against TB in individuals naturally exposed to Mycobacterium tuberculosis at FIOCRUZ since 2007.
BCG vaccine (in vitro models) , Human Tuberculosis (cell-mediated immune response). , Hyalohyphomycosis (mice model). , Co-infections (in vitro models).