research group

Drug Design and Organic Synthesis

Main research area of the group

Oncology

Leading researcher:

Prof. DSc. Irini Doytchinova

Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Chemistry, MU – Sofia

Members of the research team:

  • Prof. PhD Adriana Bakalova; Prof. PhD Ivan Dimitrov;
  • Assoc. Prof. PhD Georgi Stavrakov;
  • Assoc. Prof. PhD Boryana Nikolova-Mladenova;
  • Assoc. Prof. PhD Emiliya Cherneva;
  • Assoc. Prof. PhD Violina Stoyanova (Angelova);
  • Assoc. Prof. PhD Zvetanka Zhivkova
  • Assoc. Prof. PhD Mariyana Atanasova;
  • MSCA Postdoctoral Fellow PhD Danislav Spassov

Research goals

To discover novel molecules with anticancer activity, we define the following research goals: 1. To design molecules with potential anticancer activities and drug- or lead-like properties: safe, bioavailable, with appropriate physicochemical and ADME properties, synthetically feasible. 2. To synthesize the designed molecules with appropriate purity and good yield and to confirm experimentally their structures. 3. To test the anticancer activity of the synthesized structures by specific biochemical analyses and in vitro tests on several cancer cell lines. 4. To analyze the results by the methods of drug design and to proceed with the hit-to-lead optimization until safe, active, and selective molecules are developed. 5. To regularly publish the derived results in scientific journals with high impact factors and to present them at national and international conferences.