Medicinal Chemistry of Anticancer Drugs

Mª del Carmen Avendaño López received her doctoral degree in Pharmacy at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) in 1970. In 1986, she became Full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Department of Organic and Pharmaceutical Chemistry of this university, being responsible for one of its research groups. Between 1993 and 2009, she was a member of the Scientific Advising Committee for the Profarma Program, organized by the Spanish Ministry for Industry to incentivize research activities at the pharmaceutical industry. She was appointed Vice-rector in charge of Postgraduate Degrees at the International University Menéndez y Pelayo¿ in 2005-2007. She participated in the development of the Spanish Society for Therapeutical Chemistry and has also been a member of several scientific international societies and assessment committees. Since 1999, she is a Fellow of the Spanish National Royal Academy of Pharmacy where she is in charge of all activities related to Medicinal Chemistry, with particular focus on the relevance of chemistry in drug discovery and development. She has co-authored several chapters in periodical series and encyclopedias, including Comprehensive Heterocyclic Chemistry¿ and Science of Synthesis¿, and has edited and co-authored several Medicinal Chemistry textbooks, most notably Introducción a la Química Farmacéutica¿, published by McGraw-Hill Interamericana in 1993 and 2001. In 2008, she co-authored with Dr. Menéndez the first edition of Medicinal Chemistry of Anticancer Drugs for Elsevier. Her research activities, documented in about 200 publications and some patents in collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry, have dealt with the development of synthetic methodologies to obtain biologically active molecules, with particular focus on antitumor natural compounds.