Scientific output by Brazilian researchers has increased. The aim of this study was to evaluate the profile of medical research projects funded with scientific productivity grants from the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq). The authors analyzed the Lattes curricula of all Brazilian medical researchers from 2005 to 2007. The independent variables were gender, type of grant, origin of the resident institution, year of the PhD, number of national and international published articles with respective Qualis classification, number of books and book chapters, number of Master's and PhD theses and scientific initiation monographs supervised, and the journals used for publication. The male/female ratio was 1.94:1. Most of the grantees were in the second class (51.4%), spread across 13 States of Brazil but with the largest contingent in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. 97.1% of the researchers were in universities, and 49.4% of them had completed their PhDs program in the previous 6 to 15 years. Articles were mainly published in Qualis A and C international journals and Qualis B Brazilian journals. The most common form of supervision was for Master's theses, followed by scientific initiation monographs and PhD dissertations. The two journals that published the most articles were the Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research and Transplantation Proceedings. Studies in other areas with similar methodologies could provide better knowledge of Brazil's scientific output and help define strategies to meet research needs, since there are few Brazilian studies on the scientific output generated by CNPq grants