"Medicinal or pharmaceutical chemistry is a scientific discipline at the intersection of chemistry and pharmacy involved with designing and developing pharmaceutical drugs."
Discussion of emerging topics like nanomedicine, biophysical techniques, and personalized medicine.
Drug Discovery: This involves identifying potential drug candidates and optimizing their properties for therapeutic use.
Target Identification: Understanding the biological processes involved in a disease state and identifying potential drug targets.
Drug Design and Optimization: Utilizing computational and experimental methods to design and optimize drug molecules for specific biological targets.
Chemical Biology: Studying the interactions between small molecules and biological systems to identify new drug targets and develop more effective treatments.
Drug Delivery: Investigating the development of novel delivery methods for improved drug efficacy and reduced side effects.
Proteomics and Metabolomics: Analyzing the proteome and metabolome of living organisms to identify potential drug targets and understand drug metabolism.
Structural Biology: Utilizing techniques such as X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy to understand the structure and function of biological molecules and their interactions with drugs.
Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics: Investigating how drugs interact with the body and how they are metabolized and excreted, as well as their therapeutic effects.
Immunology: Understanding the immune system and how it can be targeted to develop new treatments for diseases such as cancer and autoimmune disorders.
Nanomedicine: Exploring the use of nanotechnology in medicine to enhance drug delivery, improve diagnosis and imaging, and develop new therapeutics.
Drug Resistance: Investigating mechanisms of drug resistance and developing strategies to overcome it for more effective treatments.
Epigenetics: Understanding the role of epigenetic modifications in disease and developing new treatments that target these modifications.
Genome Editing: Utilizing techniques such as CRISPR/Cas9 to edit the genome and develop new treatments for genetic disorders.
Biologics: Developing and studying the use of larger, more complex molecules such as antibodies and proteins as therapeutics.
Artificial Intelligence: Utilizing machine learning and other AI techniques to accelerate drug discovery and development.
Cancer chemotherapy drug development: This field focuses on the discovery and development of drugs to treat cancer.
Drug delivery systems: This research area involves developing new ways to effectively deliver drugs to specific parts of the body.
Targeted drug discovery: This field aims to design drugs that target specific receptors or enzymes in the body.
Molecular imaging: This area involves using different imaging techniques to observe the body's molecular processes.
Epigenetics: This emerging field of study is focused on understanding how gene expression can be modified without changes to DNA sequences.
Antibiotic resistance: This research area is concerned with understanding and combating the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant infections.
Structural biology: This field offers new insights into drug discovery and design by providing a 3D view of protein structures and their interactions.
Natural product drug discovery: This research focuses on the discovery of new drugs derived from natural sources.
Computational chemistry: This area integrates computer technology with chemistry, allowing for more accurate analyses and predictive models.
Neuropharmacology: This research area focuses on the development of drugs to treat neurological and psychiatric disorders.
"Medicinal chemistry involves the identification, synthesis, and development of new chemical entities suitable for therapeutic use."
"It also includes the study of existing drugs, their biological properties, and their quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSAR)."
"Medicinal chemistry is a highly interdisciplinary science combining organic chemistry with biochemistry, computational chemistry, pharmacology, molecular biology, statistics, and physical chemistry."
"Compounds used as medicines are most often organic compounds, which are often divided into the broad classes of small organic molecules and 'biologics.'"
"e.g., atorvastatin, fluticasone, clopidogrel"
"e.g., infliximab, erythropoietin, insulin glargine"
"Medicines can also be inorganic and organometallic compounds, commonly referred to as metallodrugs."
"The discipline of Medicinal Inorganic Chemistry investigates the role of metals in medicine (metallotherapeutics), which involves the study and treatment of diseases and health conditions associated with inorganic metals in biological systems."
"There are several metallotherapeutics approved for the treatment of cancer, antimicrobials, diabetes, broad-spectrum antibiotic, bipolar disorder."
"Other areas of study include: metallomics, genomics, proteomics, diagnostic agents, and radiopharmaceuticals."
"Medicinal chemistry in its most common practice—focusing on small organic molecules—encompasses synthetic organic chemistry and aspects of natural products and computational chemistry in close combination with chemical biology, enzymology, and structural biology."
"Together aiming at the discovery and development of new therapeutic agents. Practically speaking, it involves chemical aspects of identification and then systematic, thorough synthetic alteration of new chemical entities to make them suitable for therapeutic use."
"Pharmaceutical chemistry is focused on quality aspects of medicines and aims to assure fitness for the purpose of medicinal products."
"At the biological interface, medicinal chemistry combines to form a set of highly interdisciplinary sciences, setting its organic, physical, and computational emphases alongside biological areas such as biochemistry, molecular biology, pharmacognosy and pharmacology, toxicology, and veterinary and human medicine."
"These, with project management, statistics, and pharmaceutical business practices, systematically oversee altering identified chemical agents such that after pharmaceutical formulation, they are safe and efficacious, and therefore suitable for use in the treatment of disease."