Elisabeth F Schwartz 11th Australian Peptide Conference 2015

Elisabeth F Schwartz

Prof. Elisabeth F. Schwartz, born in Brazil, is a biologist and completed her Ph.D. degree in physiological sciences at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, in 1987. Since then, she has been working with animal toxins. After spending 1 year in postdoctoral training at the lab of Prof. Lourival D. Possani at the Institute of Biotechnology of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in 2004–2005, her research interest was pointed to arthropod venom toxins, mainly scorpion peptides acting on ion channels. Over the last 10 years, her work – mainly focused on the identification and characterization of scorpion toxins – combined proteomic and transcriptomic approaches. She is currently associate professor (DE) at the University of Brasilia, Brasilia, DF, Brazil, where she teaches physiology and pharmacology. Her investigative work resulted in about 50 scientific publications, independently cited 400 times. She advised more than 70 students at levels of college, master’s, and Ph.D. degrees. She has experience in Toxicology, with emphasis in biochemistry and pharmacology of neuroactive peptides. Develops projects to describe new components of the venom of arthropods, especially those of scorpions and tarantulas spiders, and carry out bioprospecting of new pharmacological tools. For this, she uses techniques of proteomics and transcriptome of venom glands. She has a special interest on neurotoxins that modulate ion channels, using electrophysiology cell techniques in these studies.