Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Design (MEDC/CHEM 310)

Spring 2010 (3 credits)

Meetings:

MEDC 310 will meet Mondays and Wednesdays at 7:00-8:15 pm in Room 1160 of the Temple Building.

Goals and Objectives:

MEDC 310 is designed to expose undergraduate Chemistry, Biology and Pre-medicine majors to the history, theory and practice of Medicinal Chemistry. The course will emphasize a combination of fundamentals and applications of drug design and development. In particular, the molecular aspects of drug action (chemical, physical, and biological) will be discussed. Special emphasis will also be placed on the methods used by Medicinal Chemists to design new drugs to treat significant disease states, and by Pharmaceutical Chemists to develop, deliver and monitor effective therapeutic agents.

At the completion of this course:

1. The student should be able to relate basic concepts in a variety of drug classes to their biological action.

2. The student should know the chemical basis for some of the known mechanisms of drug action.

3. The student should understand the role of molecular modification in the development of new drugs; its successes, shortcomings and failures.

4. The student should understand the role of de novo and molecular modeling techniques in the development of new drugs.

5. The student should be able to relate chemical structure to biological availability, biological activity, and routes of delivery/metabolism for some of the more important pharmacological classes.

Prerequisite:

The student is expected to have completed a two semester sequence in Organic Chemistry. (Biochemistry or Cell Biology is recommended.)

Schedule:

The course website is no longer active -- all materials have been moved to Blackboard -- but the Syllabus for 2010 is available here.