Pioneering Neglected Disease Research in Southern Mexico at the “Dr. Hideyo Noguchi” Regional Research Center

The Autonomous University of Yucatan is a major public university in Mexico, and the largest institution for superior education in the southern part of the country, with 772 academics attending over 20,000 students. It offers 43 undergraduate and 53 graduate programs in all areas of knowledge. On October 12, 1975, Dr. Alberto Rosado G. Cantón, rector of the University at this time, created the Biomedical Research Center to provide the institution with a leading facility to perform scientific medical research. The Center was named in honor of Dr. Hideyo Noguchi, the famous Japanese scientist who worked on yellow fever in the region from 1918–1920 and received a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the School of Medicine of the University in 1920. The Research Center initiated its activities with three departments: Tropical Pathology, headed by Dr. Jorge Zavala-Velazquez; Reproductive Health, headed by Dr. Thelma CetinaCanto; and Physiology, headed by Dr. Heriberto Arcila-Herrera. In 1976, the Center was strengthened by the incorporation of several researchers in social sciences, and renamed ‘‘Dr. Hideyo Noguchi’’ Regional Research Center. In 1987, it became organized in a Social Science and a Biomedical Unit, to accommodate wider research interests encompassing virology, microbiology, parasitology, reproductive health, human genetics, hematology, social medicine, neurosciences, regional development, Mayan identity and culture, and political and social processes. The department of Tropical Pathology initially pioneered some key research in Mexico and in the region in the area of tropical medicine and several neglected diseases. It also served as a seed for the training of several young researchers who contributed to the growth of the Research Center by becoming group leaders themselves in the following years, including Dr. Andrade-Narvaez, Dr. Puerto-Manzano, Dr. Farfan-Ale, and Dr. Barrera-Perez, and more recently Dr. Zavala-Castro, Dr. Garcia-Miss, Dr. Acosta-Vianna, and Dr. Vargas-González, among others.