The Department of Chemistry of Natural Compounds at the Faculty of Food and Biochemical Technology at UCT Prague was founded in 1991 as the successor to the Laboratory of Monosaccharides. Its mission includes both education and training at the graduate as well as postgraduate level and research and development in several fields crossing the frontier between organic chemistry and biology.
Our department's research aims to understand living systems at the molecular level, providing new molecules with new properties that eventually could become medicines, among other things. It is essential to continue this research at the fundamental level so as to provide tools for designing, synthesizing, and evaluating new functional molecules for targeting applications. Nature is our inspiration.
Key research areas include:
- Chemistry of steroids and other terpenoids
- Chemistry of supramolecules with chiral natural compounds
- Synthesis of ligands for the cell-cell recognition
- The development of nanosensors for the sensing of pathogenic processes
- Analytical and bioanalytical methods
- Forensic analysis of biologically active compounds
- Chemistry of saccharides and glycomimetics
- Molecular modeling
The study of the chemical background of natural processes is a huge adventure, which we ourselves enjoy and wish to share with others. —Oldrich Lapcik, Department Chair
For further details about our research topics, please visit the webpages of individual teams.