Reflections from the 56th Brazilian Congress of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics

I had the honour to be invited as a speaker to the 56^th Brazilian Congress of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (SBFTE), held in Balneário Camboniú in the state of Santa Caterina in the south of Brazil (7-10^th October 2024).
 
The meeting was attended by 652 delegates from 10 countries. There were 11 symposia and nine invited lectures, including the Rocha E. Silva Memorial Lecture on Calcitonin Gene related Peptide delivered by our very own Professor Sue Brain from King’s College London (KCL). The session I spoke in and co-chaired was jointly organised and supported by the SBFTE and the British Pharmacological Society. There were also 21 oral communication sessions, including 11 involved with the National Pain Symposium, which was a major theme running throughout the meeting. Professor Brain, along with Professor Stuart Bevan and Dr David Andersson from KCL, ran several workshops discussing advances in the field of pain pharmacology as part of the meeting. More than 400 abstracts were presented at the meeting across a wide range of pharmacological topics, both as oral communications and as e-posters, which provided a very vibrant atmosphere to the meeting with the majority of the sessions being very busy, particularly with contributions from early career researchers.
 
There was an excellent session on “Women in Pharmacology” with awards being presented for women at different stages of their careers, as well as a symposium and roundtable on “Empowering Women in Science and Technology” at which Professor Brain reviewed the progress and initiatives that have been made in the UK in this important field. One session in the meeting discussed the future of clinical pharmacological research in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, with SBFTE actively trying to facilitate improved clinical pharmacology research across South America.
 
Importantly, there were many workshops organised for early career researchers regarding preparation of manuscripts, experimental design and meet the professor/mentorship sessions. One particularly interesting and novel part of the meeting was an initiative entitled “Merging Scientific Discoveries with Artistic Expression” where some participants exhibited their own artwork to reflect scientific discoveries. The meeting closed with a Plenary Lecture from Professor Péter Ferdinandy from Semmelweiss University in Budapest, Hungary, who talked about the challenges of developing miRNA therapeutics for cardiovascular disease. This platform also gave Péter the opportunity to promote the benefits of publishing  in the British Journal of Pharmacology, where he is currently Editor in Chief. From my discussions with colleagues at all levels of seniority, during the meeting, the British Journal of Pharmacology is the journal that our colleagues aspire to publish in with their new findings and I hope we will see a flurry of new papers being submitted to our journals from our friends in Brazil, as there is no doubt there is a lot of very high quality pharmacological research being undertaken there.
 
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the BPS for their support for this meeting which I am sure will help improve our reputation as a leading pharmacological society. Overall, the meeting was thoroughly enjoyable and I would deem a great success. I can certainly confirm that pharmacology as a discipline is alive and well in Brazil and is being strongly supported by the activities of the SBFTE. There is a very strong desire by the Brazilian Society to have more interactions with the BPS and its members and I would encourage you all to think about participating in the next meeting of SBFTE in June 2025 in the state of Sao Paolo.

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