Saturday, November 25, 2017

Medicinal Chemistry: A Drug Design Perspectives

Medicinal chemistry is the scientific discipline at the intersection of chemistry and pharmacy that deals with the design, identification, synthesis and development of new molecular entities for therapeutic use. The main aim of medicinal chemistry is the design, discover and development of new compounds that becomes as a drug for therapeutic use. This process involves a team of workers from a wide range of disciplines such as biology, chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology, medicine, mathematics and computing, amongst others. Medicinal chemistry also involves the isolation of compounds from natural sources. 
The discovery or design of a new drug not only requires a discovery or design process but also the synthesis of the drug, a method of drug administration, the development of tests and procedures to establish how it operates in the body and a safety assessment. Drug discovery may also require fundamental research into the biological and chemical nature of the diseased state. These and other aspects of drug design and discovery require input from specialists in many other fields and so medicinal chemists need to have an outline knowledge of the relevant aspects of these fields. 

What are Drugs ?

Drugs are mainly defined as chemical substances that are used to cure or prevent diseases in humans, animals and plants. The activity of a drug is its pharmaceutical effect on the subject, for example, analgesic or b-blocker, whereas its potency is the quantitative nature of that effect. Unfortunately the term drug is also used by the media and the general public to describe the substances taken for their psychotic rather than medicinal effects. However, this does not mean that these substances cannot be used as drugs. Heroin, for example, is a very effective painkiller and is used as such in the form of diamorphine in terminal cancer cases.


Drug Action-

The action of drugs and the sites at which they are believed to act are extremely varied. Common target sites are the cell envelopes and walls of microorganisms, enzymes, receptors, nucleic acids and viruses. 
Read next article for the structures and  action of  drugs that target these sites. It also covers the  some of the general strategies adopted to discover new leads for some of these targets.

1 comment:

  1. Though the ultimate guidelines round safety, recordkeeping, and different necessities for medical marijuana dispensaries won't be established till April 2011, there are specific necessities that are enshrined in Proposition 203 itself and could be identified forward of the time that the ultimate guidelines come out. These minimal necessities is probably not as restrictive as the ultimate necessities that are printed in April 2011. tips for branding cannabis business

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