Research Viewpoints

Meet the Editor-in-Chief of the Pathobiology Journal: Prof. Dr. Fernando Schmitt

Introducing Prof. Dr. Fernando Schmitt

Editor-in-Chief of the journal Pathobiology, Director of RISE (Health Research Network) and Professor of Pathology at the Medical Faculty of University of Porto, Porto, Portugal.

Tell us about yourself and your background.

My name is Fernando Schmitt. I’m a full professor of pathology at the Medical Faculty of Porto University and I’m a director of RISE, the Health Research Network, the Research Institute from the medical faculty.

Tell us about your scientific/clinical research.

At the beginning, my focus of research was on breast cancer, particularly identifying biomarkers and mechanisms of invasion and metastasis for the last 10-15 years. I was also dedicated to the study of molecular markers in cytology material. But since 2020, I became director of the Research Center. It’s becoming more and more challenging to do research exclusively because I have more and more administrative tasks, but I always try to spend time in the lab, and I still have master’s and PhD students.

Are you involved in any clinical trials?

I have always tried to do clinical oriented research. During my PhD I tried to do a thesis with human breast invasive lesion samples. But, at that time in the PhD program that I was in, they said that research is only on animals, not on humans. So, 30 years later, I’m now directing a center devoted to clinical research, because I think that we are living in an era of clinical research. It is important to bring the results from the lab to the patient and not solely complete a study for a paper or a grant. Now, we need to aim for more research that goes beyond the lab. As a pathologist, I was involved in several clinical trials revising slides, reclassifying tumors, and identifying biomarkers in tumors. Last year, I was involved in a multinational clinical trial concerning HER2 status of metastatic breast cancers.

Are you collaborating with pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies?

Collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry is crucial at this moment. I’m from academia. I have been in academia full-time since the beginning of my career, but I recognized that collaboration with companies, pharmaceutical or biotech is crucial for the development of the academic research. I collaborate a lot with different pharmaceutical companies in clinical trials but also in getting grants for research, not necessarily clinical trials, but grants for specific research in the lab with the pharmaceutical industry. I have a very good research collaboration with different pharmaceutical companies, and this is quite important. The focus of my current research is not on the development of drugs, but rather in identifying new biomarkers. At this moment, some research groups at our research institute are developing partnerships with biotech and then launching products in the market such as tools that patients can use at home for chronic diseases. Thus, collaboration with biotech is very important at this moment, and there is a lot of opportunity do these kinds of collaborations. For example, in artificial intelligence in my area, in pathology for diagnosis measurements, there are a lot of collaborations between pathology and some companies today to train AI algorithms for diagnosis and other things from an image.

Tell us about your role with any scientific/medical societies.

I am currently President of the International Academy of Cytology (IAC), and I was General Secretary since 2010. Two years ago, I became the president of the IAC. It is the only international society of cytopathology and is represented in five continents. Since I became president, we developed a communication team that is quite important today with social media and we established for the first time a digital exam qualification, an international qualification for cytopathologists and cytotechnologists. In the past, this exam was with glass slides but now it’s fully digital. We established a partnership with a company in Germany to develop this program for exams online. So now it’s just done on a computer, or tablet, or even a cell phone, and the candidates in all parts of the world can do the exam and get the qualification. We are also working on an online educational platform for IAC members with Karger.

The IAC has also started a fellowship program for young members where they can go to other countries for two months of training and established a foundation that was created to raise money for these activities. We also put a lot of effort into developing a WHO classification for cytology. So, for the for the first time in history cytology with the partnership between the IAC and WHO became more visible.

Tell us about the role of donations in supporting research.

Recently, we received a donation from a football player for our research institute and we established a training program with this donation. This is quite important not because of the amount of money that was donated but because of the example for society. While this is very well explored in United States, it is less so in Europe and rare in Portugal. But, donations are quite important for research, and I always defend donations with accountability. The football player was named Pepe. Pepe is a previous football player from Real Madrid and but now he’s in Porto. When I went to talk with him, he was very, very nice and understood the importance of the example of the donation. This was quite recent, and I hope that in the future we can have more donations.

How are your role different in the Acta Cytologica and Pathobiology journals?

I was first introduced to Karger in 2010, when I became General Secretary of the International Academy of Cytology. At that time, we were looking for a publisher for Acta Cytologica (Acta). This is something unique, the Academy is the owner of the journal. Societies can adopt a journal that belongs to a publisher, but in this case, the journal belongs to the IAC, and we were looking for a publisher because the previous publisher was in the United States, and they had closed. At that time, we were without a publisher and were looking for an international and respected publisher that could help us since the Acta Cytologica journal circulates all over the world. This was my first contact with Karger and since then we have had a very good relationship and I later became Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of the journal, Pathobiology. So, I worked with Karger on Acta Cytologica as president of the IAC and associate editor of Acta, and I also work with Karger as EIC of Pathobiology. Acta Cytologica currently has an EIC that is appointed by the Academy, Professor Kari Syrjänen who is doing a fantastic job.

What are the main differences between Acta Cytologica and Pathobiology journals?

Pathobiology readers are different from Acta because Acta is more for cytopathologists devoted to clinical practice. So, the Pathobiology journal is more linked to surgical pathologies and researchers. I’m working on making the Pathobiology journal more translational. Pathobiology is doing very well since I became EIC and its impact factor has increased. We are increasingly working to improve the quality of the journal.

What has your experience been with Karger Publishers?

I remember the discussion at the IAC when we decided to choose Karger (as the publisher for Acta) in 2010. It was a big discussion because there were many people favoring the bigger publishers and Karger was not one of the larger publishers. We discussed a lot the advantages and disadvantages of choosing a smaller publisher. Fourteen years later, I can confirm that Karger, being a smaller company, a family-owned company since the beginning, that the relationship has been much easier, more direct, and clearer than with a big company with thousands of employees changing all the time. I think that Karger has a good name in the market and yet Karger is also a worldwide publisher.

What is your vision for the Pathobiology journal?

I think that Pathobiology> needs to be more of a translational medicine journal. It is not a basic research journal. One thing that the journal needs is more promotion. Still to this day, few people know about the Pathobiology journal and there needs to be more presence at pathology congresses. The journal needs to be considered as an option for pathologists that are not aware of it and for those researchers that do clinical pathology research work.

Prof. Dr. Fernando Schmitt is a Professor of Pathology at the University of Porto and Head of Molecular Pathology at IPATIMUP. After passing his pathology training; completing a fellowship at the Karolinska Medical Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden; and rising to the rank of Professor of Pathology at the University of São Paulo (UNESP),Brazil. Since, he moved to Portugal, where he became an influential cytopathologist and breast pathologist. Dr. Schmitt gained further international experience in Canada at the University Health Network, Toronto, and acted as the Director of the Department of Medicine at Laboratoire National de Santé, Luxembourg. Returning to Portugal, he then led the development of RISE (Clinical and Translational Research Network of the Medical Faculty) as its inaugural director.

Dr. Schmitt has authored over 700 papers in peer-review journals, 33 book chapters, and edited six books. His research work is mainly focused on breast cancer, with an emphasis on molecular biomarkers, therapeutic targets and mechanisms of resistance. Recently, his research work has been focused on the study of molecular markers on cytological material. His academic leadership include his roles as the former President of the International Society of Breast Pathology, General Secretary and President of the International Academy of Cytology (IAC); editorial work as the Editor-in-Chief of Pathobiology, and Associate Editor of six major scientific journals including Acta Cytologica; and membership of the WHO-IAC Classification of Tumours. Over his career, he has been awarded several awards, including Educator of the Year 2011 by the Papanicolaou Society of Cytology, GOLDBLATT AWARD 2013 by the IAC, Dario Cruz 2018 from the Portuguese League Against Cancer for his career as a breast cancer researcher, and the 2021 International Achievement Award from the American Society of Cytopathology.