The pharmaceutical industry is the major employer of organic chemistry graduates in research, discovery, development and production. This course gives the background to the type of chemistry used in medicine, the principles of drug interaction with living things and some case histories of modern drugs. It will apply all the organic Part II courses to this very important topic. It is a mechanistically based organic chemistry course and no prior knowledge of biochemistry is required. Dr S. Warren and Dr. R.F. Newton 1-6 Modern Heterocyclic Chemistry .
Most drugs contain heterocyclic rings.
Their structure, synthesis and reactions will be described in the context of drugs for the treatment of ulcers, bacterial and viral infections, and other important disease areas. 7-9 Receptor Theory and Drug Design. The interaction between drug molecules and the human body explored with such molecules as histamine, adrenaline, prostaglandins and serotonin leading to examples of agonists and antagonists and inhibitors of specific enzyme such as HIV protease. 10-12 Examples of Important Drugs . How they were designed, how they are made, how they work and how production was scaled up.