Álvaro Macieira-Coelho

Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and the portugueses scientists in Europe

Álvaro Macieira-Coelho

Álvaro Macieira-Coelho, Egas Moniz grandnephew, was born in Lisbon in 6/05/1932. Cell and Molecular Biology of Cancers and Aging constitute his area of activity and scientific interest. He lives in Versailles, France, and is retired, although maintaining the responsibility of the edition of a series from Springer-Verlag. Through his professional career he conjugated investigation with teaching.

After finishing his graduation as a Medical doctor in Universidade de Lisboa, he did his Medical Internship at Hospital de Santa Maria, in the same city, subsequent to a contest, and received a PhD by University of Uppsala, in Sweden.

He left Portugal because he felt the need to leave to the USA and because he was offered a job at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia as research associate, thanks to local contacts. He had a salary paid by a grant from the National Health Institute (NIH).

His professional career started at the University Hospital in Lisbon where he performed his medical internship. He interrupted the internship to spend three years working as researcher at Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. After those three years, he received a one-year fellowship from the Gulbenkian Foundation and went to the Pathology’s Department of University of Uppsala. He stayed more two years in Uppsala, being paid by the Swedish Department, so he could complete his Ph.D. thesis.

In 1967 he was invited to be Head of the Department of Cell Pathology at the Cancer Institute in Villejuif, near Paris, where he settled for 20 years, and later became Research Director of the French National Institute of Medical Research (INSERM). He was then invited to spend three years as Visiting Professor at the University of Linköping in Sweden. After that, he returned to France to direct the laboratory of Cell Biology of Aging at the University of Paris VI until his retirement in 1997.

Álvaro Macieira-Coelho investigation was developed around Cell and Molecular Biology of Aging and Cancers theme. Generally speaking his goal has always been to identify control mechanisms of cell division. He has published 117 papers as first author and has co-authored another 49.

Even though being retired, he is writing books and books’ chapters and is responsible for a series published by Springer-Verlag entitled Progress in Molecular and Subcellular Biology. He also belongs to the Editorial Board of a gerontology journal.

Macieira-Coelho became known in the international scientific community through a series of contributions: introduction of the concept of uncertainty in the regulation of the cell division cycle, demonstration of the dissociation between contact inhibition of cell movement and division, comparative sensibility to neoplastic transformation along species, decline of the incidence of cancers with senescence, asymmetry of DNA’s distribution during cell division and its implications for aging, modification of the organism’s internal milieu in the neoplasic disease, influence of the cell substratum on genetic expression, identification of DNA and chromatin modifications during cellular aging of mitotic cells, correlation between DNA recombination and the cell proliferation potential, identification and purification of an inhibitor of cell division, identification of autocrine growth factors in cell transformation by oncogenic viruses.

He has received a Fritz Verzàr Prize (Vienna University, Austria), he is a Doctor honoris causa (Linköping University, Sweden) and has received a Johananof International Visiting Professorship (Mario Negri Institute, Milano, Italy).

During the first years, after leaving Portugal, Álvaro Macieira-Coelho thought about returning. Later on, he gave up that wish and nowadays he has no contacts with the country. However, in the past he was invited to lecture at the Medical Faculties of Lisbon and Coimbra and gave courses in Gerontology at the Medical Faculty (Hospital of Santa Maria) in Lisbon as a visiting Professor. He was invited to present papers at meetings in Portugal. He has also participated in the first and second meetings of Portuguese scientists working abroad that took place at the Universities of Aveiro (1995) and the Açores (1998).

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