O The active ingredient medroxyprogesterone acetate (AMP) is widely used in Brazil not only for its contraceptive effect, but also in the treatment of some types of cancer. In certain cases, ingestion can cause unfavorable side effects and, therefore, its dosage must be extremely controlled, as the usual techniques are highly specialized and expensive. In this sense, the master's research by Tânia Aparecida Lopes Pinheiro, supervised by professor Adriana Vitorino Rossi, from the Chemistry Institute, contributes to making the drug quantification process cheaper. The proposal reduces the price of analyzes by at least ten times, savings that mainly include hospitals and compounding pharmacies.

Principle active is used for contraception and cancers

Tânia Pinheiro knew that the technique recommended by the American Pharmacopoeia for analyzing AMP, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), requires sophisticated equipment and expensive reagents. Her interest in the topic increased in conversations with professionals from the Center for Comprehensive Attention to Women's Health (Caism), when she became aware of the difficulties with the lack of equipment – ​​a chromatograph costs on average U$50. “This gave rise to the idea of ​​developing a method that would allow efficient results without such a high cost, and in which the analysis could be carried out even in laboratories with little instrumental infrastructure”, she explains.

Tânia's work was also surprising because it achieved favorable results from classic chemical procedures, such as melting point measurement and spot test, introduced to previously identify the AMP to be analyzed. This part of the research had the collaboration of Luciana Foltran Martins, a CNPq scholarship holder, in a scientific initiation project.