Macron inaugurates unit of the Institut Pasteur de Paris in SP – 03/27/2024 – Balance and Health

The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, was present at the inauguration ceremony of the Institut Pasteur de São Paulo unit, on Wednesday night (27), at the Butantã campus of USP (University of São Paulo), in the west zone of the capital .

The creation of the agreement between the Institut Pasteur and USP took place in March 2023, in a ceremony celebrated by governor Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans), the Secretary of Science, Technology and Innovation of the State of São Paulo, Vahan Agopyan, the president of Fapesp , Marco Antonio Zago and the dean of USP and professor at the Faculty of Medicine of Ribeirão Preto, Carlos Gilberto Carlotti Junior, at the headquarters of the Institut Pasteur in Paris.

Now, the inauguration of the São Paulo unit consolidates this agreement and brings the two countries even closer together. It is the first time that a French head of state has visited the USP campus in the 90 years of its existence.

Macron thanked the collaboration and was enthusiastic about the new cooperation that could come from the Pasteur unit in São Paulo. “Thank you for all the work done, you are no longer a partner, but a complete Pasteur unit that will have autonomy in the research carried out here. The science produced here is something greater than France-Brazil cooperation, it will produce scientific knowledge that will surpass generations and become a common humanitarian gain”, he said.

The Institut Pasteur is a private, non-profit organization focused on scientific research and the development of vaccines and therapies for the prevention and combat of infectious and non-infectious diseases, with a focus on public health. It was founded in 1888 in the French capital and currently has 32 units associated with the Pasteur chain around the world.

In addition to the unit at USP, Fiocruz (Fundação Oswaldo Cruz), in Rio de Janeiro, and the Butantan Institute, in São Paulo, are also partners of the Pasteur network in Brazil.

According to immunologist Paola Minóprio, director of the Institut Pasteur in São Paulo, the idea of ​​scientific cooperation between the two countries began in 2014, with the creation of the platform.

“It took several years to implement the first phase, which culminated in the creation of the Pasteur-USP scientific platform in 2019 and, later, the development of common projects. In these years, we showed excellent cooperation, with more than 90 scientific productions together” , explains.

“During the pandemic, for three years we were closed here and produced excellent scientific articles, we contributed to the manufacture of diagnostic tests for the coronavirus, at a time of scarcity of swabs [cotonetes utilizados no exame PCR], we produce face shields for university employees and contractors. We don’t stop for a day”, says Minóprio.

In 2021, due to her contribution to the fight against the pandemic, Minóprio was awarded the French Legion of Honor, the same honor that Macron gave to chief Raoni last Tuesday (26).

According to her, the second phase of consolidating ties between partners with the transformation of the scientific platform as its own unit of the Institut Pasteur in São Paulo helped to attract the attention of the French president. “Macron coming here today to inaugurate us is important, but it’s not just that, what we want is to give visibility to Brazil and France cooperation, which has been very neglected in recent times, especially in the past government that discredited science, vaccines and scientific and technological advancement”, he says.

Among the lines of research that should be studied at the unit in São Paulo are emerging and re-emerging tropical diseases (such as zika, dengue and chikungunya) and also conditions that affect neurodevelopment, such as Alzheimer’s, says the director.

“Brazil is considered a hot spot of biodiversity, that is, it has a unique diversity of organisms throughout the world, with six different biomes that contribute not only viruses and bacteria that cause infectious diseases but also challenges in terms of specific therapies and treatments for each of these regions. Furthermore, population aging and the health conditions that affect people in the South and Southeast are not the same as those in the North and Northeast, and we also want to study this”, he says.

For Carlotti, dean of USP, the creation of the unit begins a new cycle of internationalization for what is the largest university in Latin America.

“Usually, USP’s international cooperation focused on student mobility [de graduação ou pós-graduação] and researchers from Brazil to abroad, and vice versa. With the inauguration of Pasteur on campus, we will have research and collaboration activities with this country on a permanent basis, with the best from the point of view of equipment, applied methodologies and spirit of international research”, he said.

At the event, the doctor highlighted the French government’s recognition of the importance of higher education and Brazilian scientific research and of cooperation between the two countries, a relationship that dates back to the founding of USP in 1934.

The Pasteur unit at USP received resources from the university for the construction of the building and maintenance of the laboratories. The research projects developed will have their own financing, either through research grants provided, mainly, by Fapesp (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo), or through other public or private funding.

The salaries of researchers hired by Pasteur will be paid by the private French institute, while those of those associated with USP will be financed by the university itself. The expectation is also that, over time, research grants and foreign resources will be granted for scientific development, such as from the CNRS (the main French research funding body).