a. History/Foundation

The Laboratory of Investigation in Chronic Diseases (LIDoC) was founded by Prof. Alex Rafacho together with Profs. Everson Araújo Nunes and Daniel Breseghello Zoccal in mid-October 2010 starting their activities in December of the same year. After suggestive names such as Cardiovascular and Endocrine Physiology Laboratory (LAFICE), Cardiovascular and Metabolism Physiology Laboratory (LAFMeC) among others, we reached a consensus with the name of LIDoC.

Alex, Daniel, and Everson (2010).

From an unparalleled union, we were able to develop our first research projects and supervise scientific initiation and master’s students. This was our first joint paper (Rafacho et al., Glucose homeostasis in rats exposed to acute intermittent hypoxia, Acta Physiol, 2013, https://doi.org/10.1111/apha.12118).

Linked to the Department of Physiological Sciences, LIDoC was soon established among the laboratories of the Center for Biological Sciences at UFSC.

After nearly 2 years of partnership, Prof. Zoccal moved to another institution (UNESP), and since then, we have had the participation of numerous collaborators, with the arrival of Prof. Gustavo Jorge dos Santos in our team of principal investigators in mid-2016.

Gustavo and Alex (2021)

Since 2019, Prof. Everson has been located at McMaster University (Canada), and in early 2022 Prof. Gustavo founded his own lab (IBM Lab).

Almost 2 years later, Prof. Rafacho invited Prof. Alexandre Giusti-Paiva to join the LIDoC’s team as a principal investigator, and since October 2023 Prof. Giusti-Paiva, a full professor with multi-task expertise, has been part of the LIDoC team where we hope to move forward with our scientific purposes.

Alex Rafacho and Alexandre Giusti-Paiva (Búzios, RJ, 2023).

Our team has already trained countless master’s and doctoral students and our vocation is to train professionals with scientific independence, critical thinking, and producing high-level scientific knowledge.