Editorial

Making the history of natural products Commemorating CPQBA’s twenty years

Maria da Graça Stupiello Andrietta

CPQBA/DBP/UNICAMP

UNICAMP’s reputation in being a pioneer is significantly expressed when focusing on the Multidisciplinary Center of Chemical, Biological, and Agricultural Research, or, the CPQBA (Centro de Pesquisas Químicas, Biológicas e Agrícolas). Twenty years ago, the University accepted the challenge of creating a center which its main purpose was to draw closer two distant worlds – the academic world and the productive sector. The University launched itself in a cutting edge enterprise, an attitude usually associated with UNICAMP’s image. As in every pioneer attitude, there was no certainty of success, only the commitment of fearless administrators and enthusiastic researchers. The great distinction the center coveted was to be able to transform the accumulated academic knowledge of the resources of the Brazilian biota into profitable business. It not only did, but continues to do so with competence. Currently, innumerable products are available on the market which can count on some form of collaboration, even if in a silent way, from research conducted at CPQBA. Young professionals, who, in the 80’s had been hired to be a part of the Center’s research group, had in common a yearning to participate with enthusiasm in the making of a history which was only beginning. The center was composed of four areas: Agro technology, Chemical waste, Phytochemistry, and Biological Processes. These areas, at that time, had been created taking into consideration the basic training as well as the professional ambitions of each one of our researchers. In the beginning, experienced outside researchers helped in a strategic way by setting guidelines for the young researchers. In the course of these twenty years, the first young researchers improved their qualifications and other professionals were incorporated in the group, making a physical and ideological expansion necessary. The center reached such professional maturity that the outside researchers became collaborators instead of mentors. This can clearly be seen by observing the profiles of the researchers who labor at CPQBA. Numerically speaking, there are today twenty two PhDs distributed among the eight departments which form the CPQBA (Organic and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Microbiology, Pharmacology and Toxicology, Agro-technology, Biotechnology and Processes, Waste Analysis, and Microbial Resources).

This issue of Multiciência which, along with other events, celebrates CPQBA’s twenty years of existence makes it possible for the reader to become familiar with the success obtained by the center in such a small period of time. This will become clear as it is realized that each one of the articles published here rightly discourses on the research field’s state of art in which it operates, always with a technological application. More than that, it leads the reader to see that each area of the center has contributed in an effective way in building the state of art of its competence. This effective way may be verified by the auto-citations throughout the articles. Therefore, we were at ease to give this issue the appropriate title, “Making the history of natural products”.

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