Sérgio Henrique Ferreira
| Sérgio Henrique Ferreira | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 4, 1934 |
| Died | July 17, 2016 (aged 81) |
| Nationality | Brazilian |
| Alma mater | University of São Paulo |
| Awards | Premio México de Ciencia y Tecnología (1999) |
Sérgio Henrique Ferreira (October 4, 1934 – July 17, 2016) was a Brazilian physician and pharmacologist noted for the discovery of the bradykinin potentiating factor, which led to new and widely used anti-hypertension drugs — the ACE inhibitors.
Ferreira received his M.D. from the Faculty of Medicine of Ribeirão Preto of the University of São Paulo (USP) and soon became staff member of the same school, where he is a member of the Department of Pharmacology. His research training in pharmacology initiated in this Department with Prof. Maurício Rocha e Silva, the discoverer of bradykinin. While working on this subject, he discovered a family of peptides present in the venom of a Brazilian snake, Bothrops jararaca, which inhibited kininase activity and strongly potentiated the effects of bradykinin in vivo and in vitro. This factor was named bradykinin potentiating factor, BPF. In 1968, with the collaboration of Dr. Lewis Joel Greene, from the Brookhaven National Laboratory, U.S., he isolated several pharmacologically active peptides responsible for the activity of BPF. Using those peptides, was demonstrated a general parallelism between bradykinin potentiation and inhibition of Angiotensin I conversion. Subsequently, his group elucidated the structure of the smallest peptide, and using the synthetic pentapeptide, demonstrated its ability to potentiate bradykinin and to inhibit the conversion of angiotensin I in vivo in experimental models of hypertension. His work in this area paved the way for the development of a new class of antihypertensive drugs, the angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors by Squibb scientists. For this work with the Bothrops peptide he received the CIBA Award for Hypertension Research of 1983, together with Drs. E. Ondetti and D. Cushman from Squibb laboratories.
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