Professor
Institute of Chemistry
University of Campinas
Campinas, Brazil
http://www.iqm.unicamp.br/en/institucional-departamentos/ronaldo-aloise-pilli
Ronaldo A. Pilli obtained a PhD in Organic Chemistry at UNICAMP (Campinas, Brazil) in 1981, followed by a postdoctoral research period at the University of California, Berkeley. R. Pilli returned to Institute of Chemistry – UNICAMP as a professor and implemented a research line in the area of stereoselective synthesis of natural products and drugs. R. Pilli contributed decisively to the implementation of competences in organic synthesis in the country, guiding generations of researchers in this area. His research group has given important contributions to the synthesis of natural products using methods of asymmetric synthesis. He received several awards and honors, and worked as a visitor researcher to the Georg-August University (Göttingen, Germany) in 1994, and at Warwick University (UK, 2005). He served as director Institute of Chemistry (2006-2009) and as UNICAMP Research Dean (2009-2013). Currently, R. Pilli works on natural products chemistry for drug discovery. More often than not, a natural product itself does not possess all the potency, selectivity, and pharmacokinetic properties required to render it a clinically useful drug. Additionally, there is always concern about the supply of enough amounts in order to secure pre-clinical and clinical investigations. Chemical synthesis and biotechnology are two approaches that have stood to the task of taking hit compounds to the lead stage and, eventually, to clinical use. In this presentation, general aspects of the drug development pipeline will be presented as well as results from our laboratory on the investigation of the chemical synthesis and biological activity of a focused library of synthetic compounds modelled on the structure of natural compounds isolated from brazilian biodiversity.
