The institute of Medicinal chemistry could be dated back to the teaching and research section of department of pharmacy in Lanzhou Medical College in 1959. It was renamed as the institute of Medicinal chemistry in 2004 when Lanzhou Medical College was incorporated into Lanzhou University in 2004. The master degree program and doctoral program in medicinal chemistry have been authorized by the Ministry of Education in 2001, and 2007, respectively.

There are 7 professors, 7 associate professors, 4 lecturers, and 3 experimentingists, which include 5 PhD supervisors and 9 master student supervisors. In the past few years, three researchers have been selected into "1000 Young Talents Program", “Gansu Feitian Program”, and “Gansu Young Teacher Talent Award”, respectively. The institute undertakes the teaching of courses of basic chemistry and pharmaceutical chemistry for the undergraduate students of School of Pharmacy, such as organic chemistry, analytical chemistry, physical chemistry, mathematical statistics; as well as the courses for graduate students of School of Pharmacy, for example, the outline of drug development, computer-aided drug design, contemporary pharmaceutical chemistry.

Under the support of Lanzhou University, the institute has been equipped with a number of advanced teaching and research instruments, which have provided a good platform for drug discovery. In the past five years, the institute has undertaken 97 projects. Among them, there are 32 national projects (19 NSFC projects), and 18 provincial (ministerial) projects. The total research funding has reached up to 13 million RMB. In return, 162 scientific papers (145 SCI papers) have been published, and 23 invention patents were granted. These research achievements have been awarded with 1 Second prize of national science and technology progress and 3 provincial and ministerial rewards. Accordingly, the institute of Medicinal chemistry has become the main base for the development of chemical medicine and national medicine in Gansu province.

The institute of pharmaceutical chemistry mainly focuses on the discovery and synthesis of new drug, the elucidation of drug structure-activity relationship, and the interaction mechanism between drug molecule and biomacromolecule.