Célio Jose Castro Junior

Celio is a professor of pain Biophysics at the Institute for Education and Research, Hospital Santa Casa de Belo Horizonte, Brazil where he also serves as a investigator supervising Ph.D. thesis, and as a member of the local committee for ethics in research evolving animal experimentation. He completed his Ph.D. at the Pharmacology Department of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil (2011) with a 'sandwich” period at the Neuroscience department, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA with the supervision of Dr. Diane Lipscombe. His scientific interests are related to the pharmacological characterization of toxins purified from the venom of the Brazilian spider Phoneutria nigriventer and also in determining the strength of interaction of drugs used in combination for treating pain. Together with Dr. Marcus V. Gomez (his old mentor) and other colleagues, we discovered a toxin (called Phα1β) with potent analgesic efficacy in different models of acute and chronic pain in rodents. His specific work is providing a substantial understanding of molecular targets associated to analgesic action of Phα1β and others analgesic toxins with focus on voltage-gated calcium channels and TRPV1 channels throughout the use of DRG cultures, heterologous expression. systems and electrophysiology. He was able to approve financial grants (from CNPq and FAPEMIG Brazil) to study drugs used in association to treat pain by means of isobolographic analysis. There is bellow a link with the list of his scientific publications since 2008. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KJVjJwAcPwoutcLf74DWsCwvVejrINk5/view?usp=sharing