Farmaseutiese Chemie

Jacobus Petrus Petzer is a professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the NWU.  He has extensive experience in medicinal chemistry and drug design.  His research interest is the rational design of drugs that block the function of enzymes such as monoamine oxidase, D-amino acid oxidase and secreted phospholipase A2 present in snake venom. He has supervised numerous postgraduate students and frequently publishes papers in peer-reviewed international journals. He has established a research group dedicated to the design, synthesis and evaluation of small molecule therapeutics. Computer-aided drug design (CADD) has been used extensively as an aid to research projects.