Sérgio Henrique Ferreira

Who is Sérgio Henrique Ferreira?

Sérgio Henrique Ferreira, Brazil, Brazilian physician and pharmacologist, noted for his discovery of Bradykinin potentiating factor, which led to better anti-hypertension drugs.

Ferreira received his M.D. from the Faculty of Medicine of Ribeirão Preto of the University of São Paulo and soon became staff member of the same school, where he is a member of the Department of Pharmacology. His research training in pharmacology initiated in this Department with Prof. Maurício Rocha e Silva, the discoverer of bradykinin. While working on this subject, he discovered a family of peptides present in the venom of a Brazilian snake, Bothrops jararaca, which inhibited kininase activity and strongly potentiated the effects of bradykinin in vivo and in vitro. This factor was named bradykinin potentiating factor, BPF. In 1968, with the collaboration of Dr. Lewis Joel Greene, from the Brookhaven National Laboratory, U.S., he isolated several pharmacologically active peptides responsible for the activity of BPF. Using those peptides, was demonstrated a general parallelism between bradykinin potentiation and inhibition of Angiotensin I conversion.