Gustavo Borrajo

Recipient of the Robert Guthrie Award 2015

Dr Gustavo Borrajo studied biochemistry at the National University of La Plata, Argentina and completed his PhD thesis entitled “Neonatal Screening for Congenital Diseases”. This topic is typical of his career. After the university he spent his working life acquiring knowledge about the detection of many inborn errors of metabolism by neonatal screening, such as phenylketonuria, galactosemia, maple syrup urine disease, biotinidase deficiency, congenital hypothyroidism, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, cystic fibrosis, Chagas’ disease and lysosomal storage disorders, with emphasis on analytical and quality issues.

He applied his knowledge working his way up in neonatal screening practice to establish in 1991 the Newborn Screening Laboratory at the Argentine Biochemical Foundation (“Fundación Bioquímica Argentina”) in La Plata, Argentina, where he worked as director since then. In 1995, he was responsible, together with other colleagues, for the implementation of the Newborn Screening Program of Buenos Aires province, the first organized and regionalized newborn screening program implemented in Argentina. In addition, in 2000, he established the External Quality Assurance Program for Neonatal Screening, aimed at Latin American Countries, being its head since then onwards.

He has been successful in obtaining financial support for a series of research projects and received a number of awards for conference contributions.
Apart from his own career, he invested in spreading this knowledge via teaching at the above mentioned university, giving numerous lectures at national and international conferences, and giving advice to different Latin American newborn screening teams.

Dr Borrajo is founding member of the Latin American Society for Inborn Errors of Metabolism and Neonatal Screening (SLEIMPN) and served since 1997 on the scientific committee of the biannual SLEIMPN conferences. He joined ISNS in 1995 and served as Council member (2002-2009) and Vice-President (2009-2013).

During ISNS2016 Dr Borrajo received the Guthrie Award itself from ISNS President Dr Veronica Wiley, in the presence of Mrs Marika Kase (PerkinElmer).

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