Head Assistant Iva Valkova graduated from the Faculty of Pharmacy, Medical University – Sofia in 1995.

Since 2001 she has been assistant and since 2010 – head assistant at the Department of Chemistry.

She defended her PhD in theoretical (including computational) chemistry in 2015. The topic of her thesis is “Quantitative relationships between chemical structure and affinity of compounds acting on serotonin and adenosine receptors”.

She currently holds the position of Head Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemistry.

She is involved in teaching “Physical and Colloid chemistry” and “Biopharmacy and Pharmacokinetics” cources.

The scientific research and contributions of head assistant Iva Valkova are in the areas of in silico quantitative structure-activity relationship analysis (QSAR), in vitro studies of transmembrane permeability across blood-brain, gastrointestinal barrier and skin, in vitro calorimetric studies (ITC) of biomolecular interactions with enzymes, nanoparticles, model lipid membranes, etc.

She has authored 25 publications and one textbook, with 313 citations in Elsevier’s Scopus indexed journals, Clavirate’s Web of science, Google scholar.

Expert in QSAR, in vitro transmembrane permeability studies, isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC)

Leader of one research project funded by the Medical Science Council, MU-Sofia. Participant in ten projects funded by the Medical Research Council, MU-Sofia and the Scientific Research Fund, MES.

Member of Bulgarian Pharmaceutical Scientific Society and Bulgarian Pharmaceutical Union.

Scientific publications:

1. Simeonova R, Vitcheva V, Kostadinova I, Valkova I, Philipova I , Stavrakov G et al. Biochemical studies on novel potent acetylcholinesterase inhibitor with dual site binding for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. C R Acad Bulg Sci. 2021;74(2):219-225
2. Andonova L, Valkova I, Zheleva-Dimitrova D, Georgieva M, Momekov G, Zlatkov A. Synthesis of new N1 arylpiperazine substituted xanthine derivatives and evaluation of their antioxidant and cytotoxic effects, Anticancer Agents Med Chem. 2019;19(4):528-537
3. Doytchinova I, Atanasova M, Valkova I, Stavrakov Georgi, Philipova I, Zhivkova Z et al. Novel hits for acetylcholinesterase inhibition derived by docking-based screening on ZINC database. J Enzyme Inhib Med Chem. 2018; 33(1);768-776

Research Projects:

1. “In silico and in vitro study of xanthine derivatives exhibiting MAOH inhibitory activity” – Medical Science Research Council – 2019.
2. “In vitro and in vivo studies of a newly synthesized galantamine derivative with potent anticholinesterase activity” – Medical Science Research Council – 2017.
3. ” Novel acetylcholinesterase inhibitors for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease” – Research Fund, Ministry of Education and Science – 2016.