USP’s University Hospital (HU) will soon gain a new partner – and a new neighbor. In the area currently occupied by the hospital’s carpentry and parking lot, directly across from the main patient entrance, a new research center dedicated to the study of metabolism will be built. Metabolism is one of the most important topics in modern biology and biomedicine, fundamental to the search for new treatments for diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and obesity, among many others.
“Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that transform molecules inside living organisms. In fact, it is what defines life,” explains researcher Alicia Kowaltowski, a professor at USP’s Institute of Chemistry (IQ) and coordinator of the project that will establish the University’s new Metabolism Center (CoMeta).
Budgeted at BRL 50 million, the center will occupy a two-story building with 2,500 square meters of constructed area. It will bring together, under one roof, four research groups already working on metabolism in different USP units, in addition to other groups that will be selected to join the initiative in the future. Construction is expected to begin in the coming months, once the executive plan is approved.
Alongside Alicia Kowaltowski’s group, which studies nutritional metabolism – how the body processes, uses, and stores energy from food and how this affects health – CoMeta will house three other permanent research groups: Professor Ariel Silber’s group from USP’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences (ICB), which studies the metabolism of pathogenic parasites; professor Sayuri Miyamoto’s group from IQ, which investigates lipid metabolism; and professor Marilia Seelaender’s group from the School of Medicine (FMUSP), which researches metabolic alterations associated with cancer.
These are distinct lines of research, but all share metabolism as their central framework. The goal, according to Kowaltowski, is to create an environment of continuous collaboration and “intellectual effervescence,” supported by a technological infrastructure that will enable research “from the molecule to the human being,” including experiments with in vitro cells and animal models. “It is very difficult for a single researcher to do all of this alone, which is why a center with specialists of different types and levels working together is so important,” she says. “We already exchange ideas and talk frequently, but that is not the same as being under the same roof”.
