Pharmaceutical sciences are more and more conducted in a multidisciplinary fashion, seeking to foster the integration of a broad range of areas of knowledge that focus on all facets of drugs and therapies, identification and control of organisms causing human disease, food sciences, as well as public and environmental health, with the ultimate goal of improving society’s health and quality of life. To expedite the achievement of these benefits, pharmaceutical sciences have to confront current major economic and social challenges such as decreased resources for research, increased regulatory stringencies, overly costly and increasingly more complex drug development process, or ageing populations with chronic diseases, through the implementation of cutting-edge innovative research approaches.

This E-book describes some innovative integrated research spanning the entire spectrum of scientific disciplines of pharmaceutical sciences led by internationally recognized research groups of the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Barcelona, which continues to maintain a leadership position among the different faculties of the consistently ranked first research university of Spain. The E-book consists of 12 chapters, which encompass contributions in areas such as botany, pharmacology, plant physiology, nutrition and food science, preventive medicine and public health, soil science and agricultural chemistry, organic chemistry, physical chemistry, microbiology, parasitology, pharmacy and pharmaceutical technology (biopharmacy and pharmacokinetics), and physiology. Chapter 1 reports some examples of surface-associated microorganism assemblies, constituting the socalled biofilms, as well as their regulatory mechanisms and their role in the degradation of cultural heritage sites and some methods used in the study of their 3D structure to manage and prevent uncontrolled colonization. C