For pharmaceutical teachers drawn across the country, a one week faculty training school, “Contemporary Trends in the Realm of Medicinal Chemistry” commenced today at University Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (UIPS), Panjab University (PU) Campus.

As many as 20 young faculty members from different eight states are participating in the week long programme. The training school would continue in Golden Jubilee Seminar Hall of PU Campus.

PU Dean University Instructions (DUI) Professor A. K. Bhandari was the Guest of Honor on the occasion. In his address, he emphasized the development of targeted approaches towards drug design.

PU UIPS Chairperson, Programme Coordinator, UGC-NRC Professor Bhupinder Singh Bhoop focused on the accomplishments of UGC-NRC programme and the significance of this one week course.

Director National Institute for Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Mohali Professor K. K. Bhutani was the Chief Guest. In his Keynote Address on “Enriching Medicinal Chemistry Realms with Contemporary Natural Products”, Prof Bhutani highlighted the importance of natural products chemistry in drug discovery. He showed he need to utilize natural leads for arriving at novel therapeutic molecules.

In her welcome Address, Coordinator of the programme, Professor Renu Chadha welcomed the audience and briefed them about the course content and familiarized the contemporary trends in the realm of medicinal chemistry.

Subsequent to the inaugural function, a lecture by Pharmacy Department, Faculty of Technology & Engineering, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara Professor M. R. Yadav gave an enlightening talk on the “Design  and  Development of  α₁  and  AT₁  Blocking  Dual  Inhibitors as  Potential  Anti-Hypertensive Agents”. In the afternoon session, a workshop on various chromatographic techniques was conducted by Professor Maninder Karan and Dr Jai Malik, Assistant Professor, UIPS followed by a laboratory demonstration on various thermoanalytical and spectroscopic methods, by the coordinators of the training school.

UIPS is the first and the only Pharmacy Institute in the country selected by MHRD for creating UGC Networking Resource Centre to promote research and academics in the field of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

This course is intended to explore varied aspects of this realm focusing on qualitative as well as quantitative aspects of medicinal chemistry, also encompassing exposure to green chemistry approach. The course content will also impart training on the use of various analytical and spectroscopic techniques for structural characterization of compounds. The key topics of the programme would comprise Combinatorial chemistry, Computer-aided drug design and QSAR, Green chemistry approaches, Advanced analytical techniques like two dimensional NMR, HPLC, UPLC, GC and X-ray spectroscopy, Hands–on training on the use of modern analytical techniques such as DSC, NMR, FTIR (reflectance and transmittance modes), and mass spectrometry for characterization of drug molecules, Supramolecular chemistry, Phytochemistry approaches, etc.

The programme is being carried out under the initiative of UGC Networking Resource Centre (NRC) under Coordinatorship of UIPS Professor Renu Chadha and Joint Coordinatorship of UIPS Associate Professor Ms Alka Bali.