If the reader is interested in more details regarding the creation of the Research Institute of Natural Products-UFRJ, where LQB is installed, will find on the site Memoirs of Chemistry - www.memoriasdaquimica.ccs.ufrj.br articles, interviews and videos that address the topic.
This brief history on the creation of LQB began in 1973, when then Research Center of Natural Products (CPPN) moved the Faculty of Pharmacy at UFRJ, where he held a few laboratories in the Red Beach campus, and at the invitation of Prof. Paulo da Silva Lacaz settled in the newly opened Center for Health Sciences (CCS), the Island of the University City, sharing the block H with the then Department of Biochemistry. In xxxx the CPPN became the Research Nuclei of Natural Products (NPPN) and in 2013 the Research Institute of Natural Products (IPPN).
Influenced by Prof. Benjamin Gilbert, the newly installed lab H1-027 was dedicated to the area of Synthesis and Transformation of Natural Products. Around the same time Prof. Jaime Alberto Rabi comes to CPPN from a postdoc in the U.S. and shared the coordination of the laboratory with Prof. Gilbert. Around the same time Prof. Gilbert moved to the Office of Navy Research, in Rio de Janeiro, although visited CPPN daily in the late afternoon, after their shift, leaving the laboratory under the supervision of Prof. Jaime Rabi. On the influence of Prof. Gilbert, the initial studies were focused on the use of abundant natural products in Brazil as starting materials in Organic Synthesis, line of research also developed by Prof. . Roderick Arthur Barnes at the Military Institute of Engineering (IME) in Rio de Janeiro. The Safrole was one of these products. Prof. Gilbert was also responsible for the initial studies of the synthesis of derivatives of Lapachol, aimed at obtaining new substances with antineoplastic and antiparasitic action. Both the chemistry of safrole and derivatives of Lapachol had several heirs in Rio de Janeiro.
In the 1980s I began to share with the laboratory H1-027 with Prof. Jaime Rabi and after he leaving the University in the 1990s, I assumed the coordinating of this laboratory. Over the years many have been our interests. In the late 1990s the laboratory, at that time called Asymmetric Synthesis Laboratory ( LASA ), started to act in the area of Medicinal Chemistry, exploring more fully the possibilities of scientific cooperation with laboratories located in CCSUFRJ and since then is calledb Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry (LQB). Over the years were prepared in LQB many natural products and their derivatives, especially naphthoquinones, anthraquinones, pterocarpanoquinonas, Pterocarpans, cumestanos, azapterocarpanos , pterocarpenos , chalcones, lignans, nitrones, isoxazolidines, pyrrolidines, pyrrolidones and amino acids.
Some products prepared in the past year LQB years were evaluated in vivo in mice and hamsters, as antiophidic, anticancer, antiparasitic (leishmaniasis, malaria, Chagas disease) and as protective to microcirculation. The LQB-118, one pterocarpanoquinone bearing an unprecedented structure planned in our laboratory, was patented in the USA and European Community as anticancer and antiparasitic, and licensed by UFRJ to the productive sector.
Learn more about the laboratory, the ongoing research lines, scientific cooperations and the main results obtained. See the video Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry - Past, Present and Future.