HUC BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM

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The HUC Biomedical Research Improvement Program has been created with the purpose of providing the means by which faculty members at the Humacao University College will enter into the main stream of biomedical research. At the same time, student participants are involved in research projects which stimulate and better qualify for biomedical graduate students. This application for continuation involves five subprojects; four are from the Chemistry area, and one from the Physics department. One subproject will determine the thermodynamic parameters controlling the stability of the semiquinones interacting with model biological systems and will determine how the rates of formation of oxygen and nitric oxide in redox and ultrasound systems relates to environmental/semiquinone physical properties with the aim of understanding the cytotoxic activity of antitumor quinone containing drugs. Another subproject design new methodologies for the enantioselective synthesis for enantiopure compounds with biological activity which will avoid the production of racemic mixtures which have potential toxic effects in pharmaceutic products due to the presence of the toxic enantiomer. A third Chemistry subproject is aimed at improving the synthetic scope afforded by enzymatic catalysis in organic solvents for asymmetric transformation leading to biomedical relevant compounds. Another Chemistry subproject will measure the molecular/photophysical properties of a selected group of tricyclic neuroleptics with the aim of understanding the allergical and photosensitization occurring as side effects in patients using these drugs. The physics subproject will study the heating and image non- uniformity problems in imaging the brain at high magnetic fields using computer models in order to understand the effects of heating and poor image quality and obtained when high field strengths are used. Undergraduate students will participate in these subprojects. They are trained in different laboratories, spectroscopic and computation techniques as applied to biomedical research. It is expected that the development of this project will serve as a means to obtain the desired goals, i.e., faculty obtaining biomedical mainstream research support and students entering, graduating from graduate, medical or odontology schools and following a biomedical research career.