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About us
Advancing Lead Validation and Optimization (ALVO) is an academic laboratory hosted by the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in southeastern Brazil.
ALVO is the Portuguese word for target, meaning that our core strategy is to aim at proteins-of-interest or organisms-of-interest with small molecules developed within the group.
Our team is highly multidisciplinary, with research spanning organic synthesis, cell biology, and computational chemistry, in vitro and in cell systems, often undertaken in collaboration with labs at Brazilian and foreign universities, national pharmaceutical companies, and research centers.
The Chemistry Institute
The Chemistry Institute at UNICAMP is one of Brazil’s leading centers for chemical research. The institute is organized into four specialized departments: Analytical Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, and Physical Chemistry.
The institute offers state-of-the-art infrastructure to support both education and research in the chemical sciences. Research laboratories and instrumentation facilities account for nearly 9.000 m2, offering access to modern analytical and experimental tools.
The institute is conveniently located near the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory, the largest research infrastructure ever built in Brazil, further expanding the range of advanced research opportunities available to its students and faculty.
The PI
Dr. Cunha earned his degree in Pharmacy from Mackenzie Presbyterian University in 2014 (Brazil). Following this, he pursued a Ph.D. in Sciences from the University of São Paulo in 2019 (Brazil). In 2017, Dr. Cunha was awarded a Swiss Scholarship, which allowed him to conduct research at the Universität Bern (Switzerland). During this period, his work was centered on the medicinal chemistry of ion channels. From 2020 to 2025, Dr. Cunha was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Medicinal Chemistry (CQMED) at UNICAMP. In this role, he coordinated the chemical synthesis laboratory, focusing on the design, synthesis, and optimization of small molecules to support new drug discovery programs.
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