I´m a medical oncologist who cares for people with genitourinary malignancies (prostate, bladder, kidney, and germ cell tumors). Since 2019, I serve as chief ot the Genitourinary Medical Oncology Service at Instituto do Câncer do Estado de São Paulo (University of São Paulo) and as a Medical Oncologist at Rede D´Or São Luiz along with a great team of experts. My main goal is to help people with GU cancers to live longer and better.
My interest in Medical Oncology started while developing fundamental research as an undergraduate student. At this time, I was working at Professor Ronaldo Ribeiro´s laboratory. In his lab, I was involved in the development of several animal models to study the pathogenesis of chemotherapy-induced side effects. After graduating from Medical School in 2008, I decided to volunteer to serve as a military doctor in the poor countryside of my hometown state. After finishing my residency training in Internal Medicine at Ribeirão Preto Medical School (University of São Paulo), I resumed my laboratory work and obtained a PhD degree in 2015. In my PhD thesis, we showed a novel mechanism through which tumor-associated macrophages accumulate in the tumor microenvironment. This could aid in bringing insights for new biomarkers and in the development of new immunotherapeutic strategies. From 2015 to 2018, I underwent a fellowship in Medical Oncology under the supervision of Professor Paulo Hoff at Instituto do Câncer do Estado de São Paulo (University of São Paulo).
Few years before my graduation, my grandfather was diagnosed with prostate cancer and ultimately passed away after many years of treatment, suffering with disease symptoms and treatment-related toxicities. This sparked my later decision to specialize in caring for people with genitourinary cancers. From 2018 to 2019, I performed an Advanced Clinical Fellowship in the Genitourinary Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, under mentorship of Dr. Michael Morris. At MSK, I had a wonderful experience in clinical care and research, had the opportunity to meet the most caring doctors in my field, and made many friends with the same clinical and research interests.
In 2019, I accepted the invitation to return to Brazil and serve as chief of the Genitourinary Medical Oncology Service at Instituto do Cancer do Estado de São Paulo (University of São Paulo) and to become a Medical Oncologist at Rede D´Or São Luiz, with the objectives of improving patient care and leading the development and conductance of clinical trials and translational research.