Handbook

This subject covers chemical aspects of the design, physiological activity and metabolism of therapeutic/diagnostic drugs. The theoretical component covers: cellular targets for drug action (theoretical aspects and case studies), an overview of approaches to drug discovery, structure activity relationships and computer aided methods physiochemical properties and drug action, drug metabolism, drug resistance, pro-drug strategies and organic/inorganic medicinal agents. In addition, a guest lecturer from a pharmaceutical company will give a 2 hour lecture on current issues and strategies for successful drug design, research and marketing. The course also includes a compulsory 13-week (3 hour per week) laboratory component which involves organic synthesis and enzyme inhibition studies. Advanced Laboratory Project, 6 cp. CHEM930 also includes a further additional practical component which is designed to give Masters students an opportunity to either acquire or improve their research skills in a closely-supervised environment. The project would expand the students' assumed prior knowledge of in/organic synthesis/medicinal chemistry. An example of a project might be "Drug targeting of DNA". At the end of the project, students can be expected to be reasonably competent in basic synthetic chemistry procedures (including characterisation methods such as NMR and the subsequent assignment of spectra), as well as to have a basic working knowledge of techniques commonly used to probe the interactions of small molecules with various DNA structures. Such techniques include Circular Dichroism (CD), and Electrospray Ionisation Mass Spectrometry (ESI-MS).