MChem Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry / Course details

  The unit will introduce the basics of drug discovery, and the analytical and computational tools used in medicinal chemistry. The unit will consist of lectures by academics from the School of Chemistry and the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Learning materials are delivered by a mixture of lectures and workshops, supported by E-learning content.

• To gain knowledge of key historically important events during the development of modern medicinal chemistry.
• To expand and consolidate knowledge of the important chemical principles which underlie the drug discovery process.
• To be able to rationalize the documented drug discovery programs leading to known pharmaceutical entities.
• To be able to devise plausible discovery strategies for unseen/hypothetical drug targets.
• Describe how molecular modelling methods have evolved and integrate into modern, multidisciplinary structure-based design.
• Summarise the key concepts surrounding the potential energy surface, including methods of energy calculation and exploration, and appreciate the advantages and limitations of these methods
• Describe computer-based 2D and 3D approaches to drug design and discovery, including functional group mapping, virtual screening, de novo design, quantitative-structure activity relationships and database analysis.
• Compare and contrast 2D and 3D approaches computer-aided drug design, giving examples of their use in drug discovery projects.
• Describe the basic principles behind chromatography- and mass spectrometry-based techniques.
• Illustrate the role analytical chemistry plays in the various stages of drug discovery and development.
• Select and assess the application of analytical methods for specific activities associated with drug discovery and development.
• Interpret the results of quantitative and qualitative bioanalytical measurements.