Paulo A.S. Mourão obtained his MD (1975) and PhD (1975) at the Federal University of São Paulo. Postdoc at Baylor College of Medicine (USA) with a fellowship from the US NIH/ Fogarty International Research Fellow. Since 1981, he has been a Professor of Biochemistry at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Full Professor since 1992. He coordinates the “Connective Tissue Laboratory”, located at the University Hospital, in a project to integrate basic and clinical areas of the institution. He is responsible for an innovative postgraduate program that combines the MD with the PhD. His research theme is glycobiology, especially aimed at the study of structure, biological activity and metabolism of sulfated polysaccharides, including pharmaceutical preparations of heparin and chondroitin sulfate. His research work has been funded with regular grants from national and international agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO), Mizutani Foundation for Glycoscience, British Council, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada) and COFECUB (France). Former Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, he is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Sciences of Developing Countries, and the National Order of Scientific Merit. In 2003-04 he was president of the Brazilian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
