Maria Aparecida Shikanai Yasuda is a Doctor of Medicine with basic training in pediatrics and infectious diseases. During her masters and PhD, she worked with immune responses in tropical diseases. She has specialised knowledge in Chagas disease, particularly aspects associated with immunosuppression (transplants, HIV and immunobiological drugs).

She has worked with acute Chagas disease transmitted by oral route, reactivation of Chagas disease, serological and molecular diagnoses of Chagas disease and health access to Chagas disease for Bolivian immigrants in São Paulo city. In addition, she has investigated the role of molecular methods to monitor immunosuppressed patients with chronic Chagas disease, aiming to control Chagas disease reactivation.

She has recently been involved in researching immunologic factors involved in the pathogenesis of parasitaemia and Chagas disease myocardiopathy. She was trained to apply molecular methods for human Chagas disease diagnosis at the University of Iowa and started working with cytokines in the University of Nagoya. She was a full professor at the University of São Paulo, Department of Infectious Diseases and is currently a senior professor at this Department.