That triumph undoubtedly includes the National Scientific Research Center (CNIC), a scientific institution by excellence that has been the cradle of prestigious scientists and the genesis of several other institutes, and that also has a major portfolio of products that are marketed in Cuba and abroad, like PPG, Abexol, Vasoactol, Prevenox, Oleozón and dermatological soap, some of which are very useful to fight Covid-19.
The management of new knowledge as the driving forces of the revolutionary process was part of the strategic axis led by Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro since the beginning of the Revolution, a dream come true on July 1, 1965, when the CNIC was inaugurated by a group of doctors who had graduated in recent years and who responded to the call to devote to biomedical research, Doctor in Sciences Talena Ledón, deputy director of the institution, told Cuba Internacional.
It also brought together chemists and engineers from different specialties with the goal of preparing those young physicians in basic sciences (mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology) in an intensive and novel regime to initiate them in research tasks, Dr. Ledón explained.
She pointed out that after 1959, scientific institutions were created before the CNIC, but this institution played a key role in training professionals and leaders in that field, whose projects and teams were the embryos of prestigious groups, many of which are currently members of the Group of Biotechnological and Pharmaceutical Industries (Biocubafarma), she noted.
Dr. Ledón said that major research units resulted from the laboratories on genetics of microorganisms and neurophysiology, like the Neurosciences Center of Cuba, founded by Drs. Pedro and Mitchell Valdés Sosa, and veterinary labs led by Dr. Rosa Elena Simeón, as a result of which the National Animal Health Center (CENSA) was created.
