The course format is a combination of lectures given by scientists from academia and industry, and case studies in the form of seminar based discussions of journal articles all dealing with strategies aimed at discovering new pharmacophores used in the treatment and diagnosis of disease. Students should be familiar with fundamental principles of pharmacology, physiology and molecular biology.
Enrollment is limited and requires approval by course coordinator.
The discovery of drug and diagnostic molecules represents the end point of a multi-disciplinary application of many different fields of knowledge. It thus provides a framework for illustrating how information from across the various pharmaceutical sciences can be integrated and applied. At the end of the course the student will have a broad overview of the discovery process as it is applied in North America and Europe as well as in depth knowledge of some components of this drug discovery process. The other goal is to provide students with access to scientists who are currently working on drug discovery at UT and in the Canadian pharmaceutical industry. Assigned reading material will be assembled and distributed to the students before the lectures.