Organic and Pharmaceutical Chemistry

Founded in 1969, the Department of Organic and Pharmaceutical Chemistry has been dedicated throughout its history to teaching and research work aimed at studying the chemical, physicochemical, and biochemical behaviour of organic compounds. In concrete, the department focuses on developing innovative chemical and pharmaceutical tools that provide solutions to the challenges society faces in the fields of Medical and Computational Chemistry, Supramolecular Chemistry, Methodological and Process Chemistry, Catalysis, as well as the design and regulation of new pharmaceutical formulations.
The department is home to the Molecular Design, Synthesis, Spectroscopy, Supramolecular Chemistry, and Methodological Chemistry laboratories, as well as the Pharmaceutical Technology and Pharmaceutical Industry Regulation units.

The Department of Organic and Pharmaceutical Chemistry conducts its teaching activities within the Undergraduate Programmes in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Pharmacy, Biotechnology, and Biomedical Sciences and the Master's Degree in Pharmaceutical Chemistry. In all programmes, the courses taught cover the fundamental and structural aspects of organic compounds as well as their synthesis and reactivity. Teaching activities related to the pharmaceutical dimension of chemistry are also offered, including computational design, synthesis, and developing new drugs on an industrial scale.
Thanks to its pharmaceutical dimension, the department is also responsible for teaching in the areas of Pharmaceutical Technology (designing pharmaceutical/cosmetic formulations), Pharmacognosy, and Record Management in the pharmaceutical industry.

The department is responsible for and spearheads the Spectroscopic Structural Determination Platform that includes the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) service. As part of their research activity, the department's faculty members actively collaborate with other national and international teams at the academic, industrial, and clinical levels.

The department's research lines fall within the areas of Organic Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, including:

• Design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of new compounds with potential activity in cell signalling, adenocarcinoma of the pancreas, leukaemia and other types of cancer, Alzheimer's, and HIV (AIDS).
• Molecular design: computational chemistry and chemoinformatics applied to drug design.
• Porphyrin pyrrole compounds with pharmacological activity and for detecting relevant biological species.
• Mesoporous silica nanoparticles such as sensor and drug nano-vehicles.
• Design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of new compounds with potential activity against myotonic dystrophy.
• New synthetic methodologies using reactive intermediates based on halogen, boron, and silicon atoms for the formation of C-C and C-X bonds.
• Design of pharmaceutical/cosmetic formulations.