Madalena Pinto currently lives in Porto, Portugal with her husband Anake. Her daughter Sara and son-in-law Eddie run their own business in the tech sector and travel the World as Digital Nomads. During her free time, Madalena enjoys reading, travelling, knitting and cross-stitch as well as going to the cinema (and eating chocolate…) Her career has taken her to various places, including researching for her PhD in Brazil and collaborations with universities namely in Thailand and Brazil.
During the early stages of the academic life, Madalena worked primarily with isolation of medicinal agents from plants. Currently, besides natural products from marine origin, she is focusing on the creation of new synthetic compounds, especially of the xanthone and flavone families. Research, however, is not solely focused on simply getting new compounds, but also on improving synthetic methodologies based on “green chemistry”.
The purpose of the research is to develop, predominantly an interdisciplinary group comprising of the following areas, Organic Chemistry, Biology, Computer-aided Design, X-Ray Crystallography and Drug Delivery Systems. Such work is being conducted in the academic environment in the field of Medicinal Chemistry in Laboratory of Organic and Pharmaceutical Chemistry of Faculty of Pharmacy and at Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research (CIIMAR). Her research area focus on Medicinal Chemistry, involving structure-based design of potential drug candidates based on marine natural products, structure-properties-activity relationship studies, optimization of bioactive compounds and pre-formulation studies. Development of small molecules with low ecotoxicity, (bio)degradable, namely antifouling agents and new siderophore/siderophore-mimetic conjugates, as an innovative area to solve environmental problems. Sustainable synthetic procedures and purification methods to reduce negative environmental impacts. Enantiomeric studies of chiral bioactive compounds and their impact on the environment. In vitro screening of various biological activities; study of cellular and molecular mechanisms of action of the most promising compounds, namely with targets related to tumorigenesis, inflammation and antimicrobial and antibiofilm activities, strategies to overcome multidrug resistance.
Languages
– Portuguese
– English
– French
– Spanish