On October 18-30, 2018 – business trip to the Medical University – Varna in order to undergo an internship under the Erasmus + KA107 grant program: Credit Mobility (for staff) Staff mobility for training; Participation in the III International Partnership Forum “International Partnerships Contribution to Universities Internationalization” and the Scientific and Practical Conference “Fifth Pharmaceutical Business Forum” (Rector’s Assistant Yakovleva O.Yu. Head of the Academic Mobility Department Skrypnyk O.O.).
September 5-15, 2018 (September 5-7 – Washington, September 7-15 – Jacksonville, Florida, USA) – business trip of the Assistant of the Pharmacology Department, Tsyvunin V.V. in order to participate in the “Innovation in Healthcare” project within the framework of the Open World Program.
The Open World Program is the US Government program funded by the Leadership Center at the Library of Congress and administered by the American Councils in Ukraine. This year, the program launched the Health Care Practitioner Innovation project to establish professional communication links between healthcare professionals from Ukraine and the United States.
As a participant in the Open World Program, Tsyvunin V.V. familiarized himself with the organization of the US health system at the federal and local levels. As part of the internship, there were held meetings with the US Senate representatives responsible for education, health and legislative affairs, as well as representatives of private insurance companies operating in the medical industry. Tsyvunin V.V. visited a number of medical centers (Baptist Health, St. Vincent’s Medical Center, Tift Regional Medical Center, Mayo Clinic) in order to become familiar with the functioning systems of medical electronic document management and the telemedicine technologies. Study visits were made to the medical colleges of the University of Florida Health Sciences Center-Jaksonville and the University of North Florida (Brooks College of Health), where it was possible not only to learn about the training methods and programs for future pharmacists, doctors and nurses in the US, but also to share the best practices in teaching medical and biological disciplines in the NUPh with the American professors through the example of pharmacology.
There was visited the Medtronic company and TeleHealth Resource Center, engaged in the development and implementation of the telemedicine technology.
A meeting was held with the Director of the largest research institute of Florida – Baptist Health Research Institute; preliminary agreements were reached on future cooperation with the NUPh in the field of clinical and preclinical drug research. In addition, there was received an idea of volunteering coordination at medical centers (St. Vincent’s Medical Center) and practical implementation of the telemedicine in the rural elementary school of Waresboro Elementary School (Waycross, Georgia), as well as the emergency care system in the Baptist Emergency (Jacksonville, Florida).
On August 30, 2018, the 4th course students of the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania, MARCIUSKAITE BRIGITA and ROMASKO SONATA visited the NUPh
The LSMU students completed the 3rd course, successfully passed the competitive selection to receive this opportunity to continue their education during one semester together with English-speaking 3rd and 4th course students of the Faculty for Foreign Citizens’ Education.
The history of cooperation between the NUPh and the LSMU is quite long. The first agreement was concluded in 2006. It has all begun with production practice of the NUPh students in Lithuania at the invitation of the then Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy Prof. Eduardas Tataseivicius.
Then there were student exchanges who are faculty members of the NUPh now. Since 2014, active cooperation in the field of scientific research has begun: faculty members, postgraduate and doctoral students can conduct experimental analytical studies on modern equipment in the LSMU purchased by the EU funds. In 2015, the NUPh together with the LSMU applied for participation in the Erasmus + program for the first time, and this application was confirmed.
So, academic exchange of faculty members and graduate students was started in the academic year 2016-2017. From February to June 2017, postgraduate student of the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry Artem Mihal studied at the LSMU; from September 1 to December 31, 2018, another postgraduate student of the NUPh Bezruk Ivan was sent to the Republic of Lithuania in order to carry out scientific research.
Training under the exchange program is an invaluable experience for every student; it is an opportunity not only to receive education, but also to study culture and traditions of another country.
We hope that this cooperation will be long-term and productive both for the NUPh and for foreign partners in the Erasmus + program, and geography of the countries participating in the academic mobility program will broaden.
From October 17, 2017 – August 17, 2018 Associate Professor of the Department of Organic Chemistry Redkin R.H. completed postdoctoral internship to perform the research project “Synthesis of solvatochromic dyes to study of protein-membrane interaction” in the framework of the grant of the International Visegrad Fund (International Visegrad Fund Scholar application # 51700474), Prague, the Czech Republic.
The project was successfully implemented within the framework of the Visegrad Fund grant (on the basis of the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry (IOCB) of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Laboratory of Chemical Biology).
The project consisted of three sub-projects:
- (1A) Synthesis of fluorescent caged photoswitchable fatty acids;
- (1B) Synthesis of fluorescent caged photoswitchable diacylglycerols;
- (2) Synthesis of the clickable derivatives of fatty acids in order to study the metabolism of fatty acids in the membranes of breast cancer cells (biological part of the project is implemented in together with Dr. Christina Gava, Institute of Molecular Oncology, Milano).
The following steps were taken in the first part of the experimental work on the project:
– the detailed search and review of the literature relevant to the project;
– the planning of the synthesis of the target products;
– the six-step synthesis of the key fluorescent synthon of the 7-diethylamino-4-hydroxymethylcoumarin; as a result of the five-step synthesis scheme proposed for the project, six new compounds and pure substances were obtained whose structure and identity was confirmed by TLC, NMR and LC/MS techniques.
– the first studies of the photolysis of the resulting compounds under the control of NMR1H and the TLC were made;
– the method of the flash chromatography and preparative HPLC were mastered;
During the second half of the internship, the following activities were carried out:
– synthesis by the ‘micro-method’ of the fatty acid derivative and hydrophilic dye ATTO532 from the rhodamine group;
– synthesis of the clickable derivatives of fatty acids bearing 3H-diazirin, developed method of their synthesis, isolation and purification;
– the interaction of the previously synthesized by Redkin R.H. spiro-derivative with the fluorescent coumarinic nucleus R-203 with a range of liposomes – dipalmitoyl- phosphatidylcholine -cholesterol (1:1, DPPC/Chol) and sphingomyelin-cholesterol (1:1, SM-Chol) by fluorescence measuring method in their solutions using the Fluoromax-4 spectrophotometer (HoribaScientific).
During the two semesters of the internship in the Czech Republic, 18 presentations were made at the internal laboratory seminars and 3 reports were made on the basis of the results of experimental studies;
– on May 25, 2018, the results of research at the interlaboratory seminar ‘Chemical Biology’ were presented at the IOCB (moderator: Dr. Anna Tsakhova)
During the internship, Redkin R.H. together with other postdoctoral students took part in the scientific discussion with Prof. John Sutherland, invited by the IOCB, the Head of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge University, Great Britain; the 2-day training on ‘design of imagelike molecules’ was held at the IOCB with support of the company “Astra Zeneca” (lecturer: David Andrews, iStrategy Oncology, IMED Biotech Unit Cambridge) took part in 2 seminars “Prague membrane discussion”.
The research results were also presented at the All-Ukrainian field-oriented conferences: II All-Ukrainian Scientific Conference “Actual problems of chemistry: research and prospects”, (16.05.2018, Zhytomyr); All-Ukrainian Scientific and Practical Conference with international participation “Synthesis and analysis of biologically active substances and medicinal substances”, dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Doctor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Professor Haidukevych A.N. (April 12-13, 2018, NUPh, Kharkov).
