Telomeres in Health and Disease

Rodrigo Calado received his MD in 1997 and PhD in 2003 both from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He was trained in hematology and did his postdoctoral fellowship at the U. S. National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland with Dr. Neal S. Young, where he also worked as a Staff Scientist between 2007 and 2011. He is currently Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of São Paulo in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. Dr. Calado was the first to report on telomerase enzyme mutations in humans causing disease (aplastic anemia) and found that telomerase complex mutations also predisposed to leukemia and liver cirrhosis. He also demonstrated that short telomeres increase chromosome instability in humans and that sex hormones up-regulate telomerase function in hematopoietic cells.