History

The Postgraduate Program in Molecular Medicine is located at the School of Medicine and was approved by the University Council in June 2010 and by CAPES in November 2011. This course originated from the Postgraduate Program in Biological Sciences: Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, based at the Institute of Biological Sciences (ICB) which had been approved by the University Council on July 2001 and recommended by CAPES with the rating grade 6 (six) in March 2002.

In the assessment regarding the period 2001/2003, Program maintained the rating grade 6. In the assessment regarding the period 2004/2006, the Program got a score 5 (five) (“courses that started in 2002 were not eligible to score 6 or 7”).

Between 2006 and 2009, faculty from the Department of Pharmacology moved to the School of Medicine and other institutions, which led them to submit a name change and headquarters of the Program, thereafter named Molecular Medicine. Subsequently in 2008, the Program faculty submitted a project to MCT/CNPq for the program “National Institutes of Science and Technology”. This project, named National Institute of Science and Technology in Molecular Medicine (MM-INCT) was approved in 2009. It aims to integrate basic sciences to clinical practice and technology allowing the study of specific cellular and molecular abnormalities related to disease development, a proposal to develop Translation Medicine in our School. The INCT in Molecular Medicine is an integral part of the Postgraduate Program and focuses its resources on research of the physiopathology of several complex diseases and the development of new therapeutic approaches. Some of these activities are done at the new Center for Molecular Imaging facility, housed at the School of Medicine, with one GE Discovery 690 PET/CT scan allowing highly sophisticated molecular and functional imaging studies on both healthy volunteers and patients and an animal GE LabPET 4 PET/CT scan to perform pre-clinical studies.