On June 25, Dr. José Barreto Campello Carvalheira, professor at the School of Medical Sciences at Unicamp and principal investigator at CEPID CancerThera, was appointed general coordinator of the National Policy for Cancer Prevention and Control (PNPCC), under the Department of Specialized Health Care at the Brazilian Ministry of Health.
The creation of the PNPCC aims to reduce the incidence of various types of cancer, ensure adequate access to comprehensive care, contribute to improving the quality of life of patients diagnosed with cancer, and reduce mortality and disability caused by the disease. The law that established the PNPCC was sanctioned in December 2023 and came into effect on June 18, 2024. Carvalheira will be responsible for supporting the implementation and monitoring of the policy’s planned actions.
About the new General Coordinator of the PNPCC
A full professor of Clinical Oncology in the Department of Anesthesiology, Oncology, and Radiology at Unicamp, Barreto graduated in Medicine from the Federal University of Pernambuco (1994) and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Unicamp (1995–1998). He is a specialist in Clinical Oncology certified by the Brazilian Society of Clinical Oncology and completed his PhD at Unicamp (1998–2002). He also served as a visiting professor at the University of California, San Francisco (USA), from 2012 to 2014.
As a principal investigator at CEPID CancerThera, Barreto has dedicated his career to studying the mechanisms linking obesity and anorexia to cancer. His research team works to better understand cancer-induced metabolic disturbances and to identify new approaches to improve disease prognosis prediction and guide targeted interventions — aiming to mitigate the impacts of cachexia (loss of body mass and nutritional deficiency) and related metabolic dysfunctions.
Text: Romulo Santana Osthues with information from the National Cancer Institute and Jornal da Unicamp | Photo: Camila Delmondes (FCM/Unicamp)
