Drugs are biologically active molecules used to treat disease states.
The chemical structure of a drug primarily determines its biological activity. An understanding of how the chemical structure affects numerous aspects including biological activity, absorption, excretion, formulation, and toxicity is important. Students taking medicinal chemistry courses are required to have background courses in general and organic chemistry. Typically these students have a highly variable background in chemistry and poor understanding of how structural chemistry relates to the aspects noted above. The amount of time available for developing an appreciation of structural chemistry as it relates to biological aspects is too little, especially considering the highly variable chemistry background of the students.