New Chemical, Biological Products and their Applications
The theme presents lines of research in graduate programs with grades 7, 6 and 5 in CAPES 2013 – 2016 quadrennial assessment, grades that confer international and national excellence to the referred programs. The research topics comprised on the theme involve international collaborations in different stages of consolidation, some tracing back to 15 years, others still incipient, but with significant results in terms of publications, cotutelles and fundraising. The theme naturally articulates to other topics of the institutional proposal, particularly to the research in nanomaterials and the study of infectious, immunoinflammatory and chronic-degenerative diseases. The collaborations of the teams working in these three themes originated a history of success, for instance, in the study of products originated from biodiversity and its applications in the medical area, mainly in the prospection of compounds with potential for the treatment of cancer tumors. In support to this strategy, the institution has a Center of Research and Drug Development (NPDM) whose activity involves all the stages, since the prospection of new compounds and organic synthesis, with toxicity testing, cell imaging, “omics” technologies to pre-clinical testing. Applications to dentistry are also included in the theme, with a project of integration of the microfluidics and tissue engineering, which enables to evaluate the odontoblastic alterations, as well as its relationship with the interface formed between dentin and the dental materials. With respect to the research on new chemical products, the theme comprises consolidated groups in the study of coordination compounds and its applications as metallodrugs, biosensors, catalysers, inhibitors, detections in traits analyses, green chemistry and liberation of drugs. Besides the aspects of the proposal, we highlight the goal of consolidating a network of international excellence researchers to investigate different and complementary aspects of carbon dioxide capture to molecules of commercial interest. The current research apparatus installed in the area includes multi-users laboratories, such as the Analytical Facility, the Regional Center of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, the Center of Research and Drug Development, the Reference Center in Genomics, besides the teams and resources in projects in scope of 3 INCTs and 3 PRONEXs.
