key: cord-0760497-sx0o6a4h
authors: Silva, Eliane Lages
title: Egler Chiari (★1934 †2020)
date: 2020-08-26
journal: Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina Tropical
DOI: 10.1590/0037-8682-0574-2020
sha: 1bbea272ea3eefd80f1e20e53a2cf7962502184b
doc_id: 760497
cord_uid: sx0o6a4h

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Interestingly, his exposure to scientific research and parasitology preceded his university education. The young Egler showed interest in biology when he passed a public service entry test in 1956 and started working at the currently named René Rachou/FIOCRUZ/ MINAS Institute, Ministry of Health, Belo Horizonte, MG, where he worked for 16 years, initially as a laboratory technician and later as a biology researcher. In this institution, his relationship with Prof. Zigman Brener awakened his scientific spirit and influenced his professional choices.

He majored in Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in 1963; during his studies, he worked as a monitor and higher education instructor of Zoology and Parasitology at the UFMG School of Dentistry and Pharmacy. He received his master's degree (1971) (1977) (1978) (1979) (1980) and sub-coordinated (1988) (1989) (1990) (1991) (1992) . He was also a Parasitology professor at the School of Medicine of Itajubá, Itajubá/MG (1971) (1972) and at the School of Medicine and Surgery of Uberlândia, Uberlândia/MG (1971) (1972) (1973) . In 2007, he began developing new projects in an endemic area for Trypanosoma cruzi in the Potiguar semiarid region, where he set up a research center on Chagas disease. He also contributed financially, academically, and scientifically to the Graduate Programs in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Parasitic Biology of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, training faculty in parasitology.

Chiari, as he was internationally known in the academe, dedicated his life to the study of protozoology directed to the biological, biochemical, and molecular characterization of Trypanosoma cruzi and the parasitological diagnosis and experimental chemotherapy of Chagas disease. He was a 1A Researcher and received a PQ/CNPq Research Productivity grant from 1988 to 2016. His restless mind, creative and intellectual capacity, and great determination were embodied by his prolific body of research, which started with the publication of three articles before he started University. Between 1956 and 2019, he published 186 articles in high impact magazines with national and international circulations and seven book chapters. He has been cited 9,302 times (h-index = 53 and i10-index = 144).

In the 1960s, he published six articles in collaboration with Dr. Zigman Brener, highlighting "Morphological variations in different Trypanosoma cruzi samples". This article published in 1963 in the Journal of the São Paulo Institute of Tropical Medicine is his fourth most cited articles (292 citations). Another important contribution at that time was his study on the viability of the blood culture technique to confirm the chronic phase of Chagas disease. In 1974, he started working as an independent researcher at UFMG, conducting in vitro and in vivo studies on the biology and behavior of T. cruzi culture forms. It was also then that he developed one of his most important scientific contributions to the study of human Chagas disease: "A new blood culture technique for the parasitological diagnosis of Chagas disease in the chronic phase" 1 . Subsequently, this technique was widely used to evaluate studies on the treatment of human and experimental infection to isolate parasite populations and as an important reference in the standardization of molecular PCR and qPCR techniques to diagnose Chagas disease.

Professor Egler always followed the progression of science, and the following decades were characterized by the consolidation of his master's and doctor's degree guidelines, different partnerships, and innovative approaches to his lines of research. The use of His passing leaves a great void in the scientific community but not in our lives. He will be remembered for his cheerful, excited, and loud speech; for his restless hands, full of gestures-reflections of his paternal Italian origin-; and for his determination, firmness, justice, and sincerity-a maternal Swiss/German influence-that bothered those who did not truly know him. Ultimately, the dignity of his soul and his concern and affection for his neighbors were privileges for those with whom he shared good wine and his culinary specialty, tenderloin. There's no way to sad, but we will miss him eternally...

Nota sobre uma nova técnica de hemocultura para diagnóstico parasitológico na Doença de Chagas na sua fase crônica

Strains and clones of Trypanosoma cruzi can be characterized by restriction endonuclease fingerprinting of kinetoplast DNA minicircles

A new consensus for Trypanosoma cruzi intraspecific nomenclature: second revision meeting recommends TcI to TcVI

 [1] [1]. Universidade Federal do Triângulo Mineiro, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas e Naturais, Departamento de Microbiologia, Imunologia e Parasitologia, Uberaba, MG, Brasil.