Maria de Sousa (1939–2020)

The FCT notes with deep sadness the passing of researcher Maria de Sousa on Tuesday, April 14, 2020. Born in Lisbon in 1939, she had to choose between a career in music as a pianist and medicine. Medicine won out, and in 1963 she graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of Lisbon, pursuing her career as a researcher in England, Scotland, the United States, and Portugal.

FCT recovers an interview conducted by Ioav Cabantchik, President of the International Bioiron Society, with Maria de Sousa in June 2018, in which she tells her story in the first person. In this interview, Maria de Sousa reveals why she chose research when she was still practicing medicine and "it was difficult to see patients and have nothing to offer them but cortisone and antibiotics. The need for research was obvious, so I started doing research and was lucky enough to make a discovery in my first job," the well-known T area.

Considered a "Woman of Science," it was between 1964 and 1966, while working at the Experimental Biology Laboratories in Mill Hill, London, that she made the great discovery that established her in the field of immunology: the discovery of the thymus-dependent area known worldwide as the T area. The researcher understood how the organized migration of lymphocytes, the immune system cells that are essential for fighting disease and infection, took place. In her experiments, she found that in the peripheral lymphatic organs there is space reserved for thymus lymphocytes, T lymphocytes (the thymus is a gland located in the chest), and other areas designated for other types of lymphocytes. Before her discovery and until 1964, it was thought that all types of lymphocytes came from the thymus.

In 1968, Maria de Sousa moved to Scotland and in 1972 she obtained her PhD in immunology from the University of Glasgow. During this period, more precisely in 1971, the researcher gave the name "ecotaxis" to the phenomenon of migration of lymphocytes of different origins, from the thymus and bone marrow, where another type of lymphocyte is formed, to specific microenvironments in the peripheral lymphatic organs.

Next stop: the United States, where the researcher worked at the Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research and Cornell Medical College, both in New York, as well as Harvard Medical School in Cambridge (Boston).

Portugal welcomed Maria de Sousa back in 1984, but it was a year later, in 1985, that she became a professor of immunology at the Abel Salazar Institute of Biomedical Sciences (ICBAS) in Porto. In 1991, she coordinated the health sciences area in the process of implementing external and independent evaluation of Portuguese research centers, conducted by JNICT (National Board for Scientific and Technological Research, predecessor of FCT).

Maria de Sousa was decorated by three presidents of the Republic: in 1995 by Mário Soares, with the rank of Grand Officer of the Order of Infante D. Henrique; in 2012 by Aníbal Cavaco Silva, with the rank of Grand Officer of the Military Order of Sant’Iago da Espada; and in 2016 by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, with the Grand Cross of the Military Order of Sant’Iago da Espada. He also received the Bial Grand Prize for Medicine in 1995, the Incentive to Excellence Award in 2004, and the Gold Medal for Scientific Merit in 2009, both awarded by the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Higher Education. It was also in 2010 that she celebrated her retirement in the Noble Hall of the Rectory of the University of Porto, where she was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus of the University of Porto in 2011. This was followed by the University of Coimbra Award in 2011 and the University of Lisbon Award in 2017.