Medicines and life (to the 100th anniversary of Professor Irina Vitalievna Zaikonnikova)

Irina Vitalevna Zaikonnikova is a well-known Soviet pharmacologist, headed the Department of Pharmacology of the Kazan State Medical Institute between 1968 and 1989. The topic of I.V. Zaikonnikova’s Ph.D. thesis was “The influence of dikain on blood vessels and its relationship with adrenaline”. In her dissertation, Irina Vitalievna found that dicaine dilates blood vessels in low concentrations and causes their constriction in high concentrations. The thesis was successfully defended in 1947. In the 50s of the last century in Kazan, for the first time in the Soviet Union, the study of the biological activity of organophosphorus compounds was begun. A large experimental material concerning the correlation between the biological activity and chemical structure of compounds was summarized in his doctoral dissertation “Pharmacological characteristics of a number of dialkylphosphinic acid esters”, which I.V. Zaikonnikova defended in 1968. At the Department of Pharmacology, which she headed since 1968, a close-knit team was formed, united by a common interest — the search and development of new potential drugs. This major work resulted in the creation of cidiphos, glycifon, phosphabenzide, and dimephosphon — organophosphorus compounds of a new type, which mechanism of action is not associated with inhibition of the activity of acetylcholinesterase. In addition, drugs that did not belong to organophosphates were created — the daytime tranquilizer mebikar, a regeneration stimulator with the immunomodulatory effect of xymedon. At present, the Department of Pharmacology of Kazan State Medical University continues the scientific traditions of our outstanding predecessors.