Medicinal chemistry

Medicinal or pharmaceutical chemistry is a scientific discipline at the intersection of chemistryand pharmacyinvolved with designingand developing pharmaceuticaldrugs. Medicinal chemistry involves the identification, synthesis and development of new chemical entitiessuitable 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 chemistrywith biochemistry, computational chemistry, pharmacology, molecular biology, statistics, and physical chemistry.

Process of drug discovery

Discovery

The first step of drug discoveryinvolves the identification of new active compounds, often called "hits", which are typically found by screening many compounds for the desired biological properties. These hits can come from natural sources, such as plants, animals, or fungi. More often, the hits can come from synthetic sources, such as historical compound collections and combinatorial chemistry.

Recent developments in roboticsand miniaturizationhave greatly accelerated and automated the screening process. Typically, a company will assay over 100,000 individual compoundsbefore moving to the optimization step.

Optimization

The second step of drug discovery involves the synthetic modification of the hits in order to improve the biological properties of the compound pharmacophore. The quantitative structure-activity relationshipof the pharmacophore play an important part in finding "lead compounds", which exhibit the most potency, most selectivity, and least toxicity.

See also: ADMEand Lipinski's Rule of Five

Development

The final step involves the rendering the "lead compounds" suitable for use in clinical trials. This involves the optimization of the syntheticroute for bulk production, and the preparation of a suitable drug formulation.

See also

• Pharmacology
• Important publications in medicinal chemistry
• Pharmacophore

External links

• Current Medicinal Chemistry
• European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry
• Journal of Medicinal Chemistry(Table of Contents)

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It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicinal+chemistry Wikipedia article Medicinal chemistry.