The environmental fate of pharmaceuticals of concern: experimental and computational study of degradation products and their ecotoxicological properties

Project funded by Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ) (Research Projects), grant IP-2022-10-2634. Participating organisations named by the source: University of Zagreb; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry. Funded amount: EUR 162,917, as stated by the source. Runs 2023-12-29 to 2027-12-28. Keywords: pharmaceuticals, environment, NMR spectroscopy, chlorination, photochemistry, quantum-chemical calculations. Source: OpenAIRE Graph, from the funder's project data (collected by OpenAIRE on 2026-07-23); national funding data, not CORDIS; selected because its keywords name quantum. Abstract given by the source: The chemical fate of pharmaceuticals is an important scientific, environmental and public health topic. The accepted term “pharmaecology" includes the knowledge of the chemical transformations of the drug induced by environmental conditions and the determination of the ecotoxicological properties of the degradation products. Among the many factors that determine the chemical fate of a drug, water chlorination and the sunlight irradiation are of special importance. In this project, the mechanisms of chlorination and photochemically induced reactions of selected drugs are investigated. The selection of a small library of drugs (eg. gemfibrozil, metformin or fluorouracil) is based on the pillars defining priority candidates for the 4th Watch List, which is in accordance with the Water Framework Directive. Research into the chemical and ecological profile of drugs includes an interdisciplinary approach, institutional cooperation and methodological synergy. As part of the project, collaborators from five different scientific institutions (8 departments, 2 countries) will use advanced spectroscopic techniques (NMR/EPR) for in situ monitoring of chemical reactions, preparative tools (LC-MS) for product isolation, and ecotoxicological assays on test organisms using standardized and accredited methods. The experimental part of the research will be supported by the intensive use of computational techniques (ab initio, DFT theoretical levels) that enable prediction and interpretation of measured data. This integration of different approaches can serve other researchers as an orientation for the redesign or implementation of new concepts for testing the chemical fate of drugs in the environment. The results on the chemical fate of the selected candidates (chemical content of the reaction mixture and ecotoxicological status of individual products) will be a contribution to the constant effort of authority institutions to supplement official databases with missing information.

Original source.

Source: OpenAIRE Graph: projects of national funders, OpenAIRE, from the project data of Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ). Retrieved 2026-10-28. Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (OpenAIRE Graph). Selected metadata, adapted presentation; the publisher's record is authoritative. No endorsement by the source is implied. Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0).

AI-assisted summary: The project, funded by the Croatian Science Foundation, studies the environmental fate of pharmaceuticals, focusing on degradation products and their ecotoxicological properties. It runs from 2023-12-29 to 2027-12-28, involving the University of Zagreb and its Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry. Suggested technology pillar: simulation. Generated by AI from the public source text; it may contain errors and the original source is authoritative.