Marcos Mercadente

I joined the Lombroso laboratory at the beginning of the 2000. At that time I was a Brazilian child psychiatrist looking for an improvement in my research skills. I was studying patients with rheumatic fever and Tourette syndrome and obsessive compulsive disease, when the lab opened the doors to the antibodies, animal models, immunological system that were there at the Child Study Center. I had a great opportunity to learn molecular biology, intracellular signaling, animal models, and immunology during my time with Dr. Lombroso. That experience changed the way that I conduct my academic work, and today, I can say that the experience influences the progress of child and adolescent psychiatry in Brazil. Translational neuroscience and the perspectives of developmental psychiatry are more clearly stated today, but at that time it was impossible for a child psychiatrist to understand the potential of these fields. Due to the multicultural environmental (I shared the lab with wonderful colleagues from the US, Russia, Bangladesh, India, China, Japan) and the scientific mind of Dr. Lombroso (the Friday lab meetings where we discussed the results of the week and planned our next steps) that experience was one of the most enjoyable ways of learning (it is also fair to include the squash games in which I thoroughly demolished him, although he probably has the opposite memory). Currently, I co-direct the National Institute of Developmental Psychiatry (http://inpd.org.br/), and I am sure that important aspects of my time in the Lombroso lab have helped build this important Brazilian Institute of Child Psychiatry.