Medicinal Chemistry

This course introduces the concepts required to understand how the biological activities of drugs will be derived from their chemical structures and physicochemical properties of various organic functional groups. In this course the students will understand functional groups, drug pKa, lipophilicity/hydrophilicity, potency, stereochemistry, the effect of structural modifications on stability, and molecular targets. In general these properties will determine drug'92s metabolic pathways, types of metabolites expected to have biological activity, signal transduction and drug-receptor interactions. The course will discuss different analytical methods used to assay pharmaceuticals and will classify drugs acting on different systems, their mechanisms of action, structure activity relationship and issues related to their pharmacology and clinical use.