**5. Team resilience to face all the difficulties**

From basic research to a putative public health recommendation in clinical protocols and therapeutic guidelines, the roadmap of the Se project was a real saga, with many obstacles that tested team resilience and Brazilian conditions of science development.

This resilience derived from the strength of the encounter between a basic research group (in Oswaldo Cruz Institute (IOC), founded by TCAJ) and a clinic research group (INI, founded by AMHM). Both groups were very active in producing new knowledge in CD and were excited with the idea of conceiving and performing the first Brazilian clinical trial [23] with a strategy based on one of the pathological mechanisms implicated in CCC [8, 9]. Overpassing all the difficulties that were listed in **Figure 2** (item 3), one after another, and attaining the conclusion of the trial gave even more strength to this partnership, our self-confidence, and our mutual respect increased.

The progress attained in the social arm of the project was also a source of resilience. More IOC/Fiocruz laboratories are associated with the project, as we could see from the Chagas Express publication [30] in August 2021. A project recently approved is preparing a virtual version of Chagas Express (https://expressochagas.com/), integrating contents related to COVID-19 as well as new expeditions to other endemic regions, planned for 2022.

*The Saga of Selenium Treatment Investigation in Chagas Disease Cardiopathy: Translational… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.103772*

In addition, this social arm of the project was developed at a very important moment in the struggle for the rights of patients with Chagas' disease. In 2018, the Ministry of Health, through its National Commission of Technology Incorporation, offered Therapeutic Guideline for CD Diagnosis and Treatment (PCDT Chagas) to public consultation, fostering discussions that lead to reformulations and publication in 2019. It was one of the main documents disseminated in the expedition to Minas Gerais by Expresso Chagas XXI [30]. We also participated in the advocacy movement that led to compulsory notification of chronic cases. Together with the traditional surveillance of cases in the acute phase, ordinance No. 1.061, May 18, 2020, introduced notification of chronic cases in Brazilian territory, strengthening the construction of public policies based on scientific evidence.

In a recent review [32], Morel discussed that CD is an example of successful translational research integrating basic and applied science, attaining the control of its transmission by insect vectors in large regions of the Southern Cone countries in the 90s. However, if the successful control of CD transmission by insect vectors is, in fact, a paradigmatic achievement in science translation, in addition to organizing a strong scientific community in Brazil and in Latin America, the translational research to focus on vaccines and treatments suffers extremely negative pressures as the ones we reported above. One important lesson to take home after this saga is that translational science on a neglected disease in *Innovative Developing Country, such* as Brazil, is not simple and needs specific policies to help scientists to overcome the valley of death. Morel also recognized that success in translation derives from "a long process led by incredible people, each one a leader in her or his area of work, who were able to collaborate with equally dedicated partners at the decision-making and political levels." As Morel reminded, thought the words of Lewis Carroll in his book, "Alice through the looking glass": "now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
