Description

The study of pharmaceutical drugs, also known as medicinal or pharmaceutical chemistry, is a scientific field that combines aspects of chemistry and pharmacy. New chemical entities that can be used in medicine are discovered, synthesized and developed in medicinal chemistry. It also includes the quantitative structure-activity relationships and biological properties of existing drugs.

Identification of Chemical Aspects

Organic chemistry, biochemistry, computational chemistry, pharmacology, molecular biology, statistics and physical chemistry are all combined in medicinal chemistry, a highly interdisciplinary field. In particular, medicinal chemistry, which typically focuses on small organic molecules, includes synthetic organic chemistry, natural product aspects, computational chemistry, chemical biology, enzymology and structural biology, all of which work together to create new therapeutic agents. In practice, it involves the systematic, thorough synthetic modification of new chemical entities to make them suitable for therapeutic use, followed by the identification of chemical aspects. Understanding the Structure Activity Relationships (SAR) of existing drugs and agents in development includes synthetic and computational aspects of their bioactivities (biological activities and properties). At the biological interface, medicinal chemistry combines to form a set of highly interdisciplinary sciences, setting its organic, physical and computational emphases alongside biological areas such as biochemistry, molecular biology, pharmacognosy and pharmacology, toxicology and veterinary and human medicine; pharmaceutical chemistry is focused on quality aspects of medicines and aims to ensure that medicinal products are fit for purpose. Project management, statistics and pharmaceutical business practices are used to systematically oversee the modification of identified chemical agents to ensure their safety and efficacy after pharmaceutical formulation, making them suitable for disease treatment. Initial hits can come from repurposing existing agents toward a new pathologic process or from observations of biologic effects of new or existing natural products from bacteria, fungi, plants and so on. Discovery is the identification of novel active chemical compounds, which are commonly referred to as hits. Additionally, structural observations of small molecule fragments bound to therapeutic targets (enzymes, receptors, etc.) frequently lead to hits. Where synthesis is used to create more chemically complex forms from the fragments. Last but not least, hits frequently result from comprehensive biochemical or chemoproteomics assay testing of chemical compounds against biological targets. These compounds may come from novel synthetic chemical libraries that are known to possess particular properties (kinase inhibitory activity, diversity or drug-likeness, etc.). Or from combinatorial chemistry-based libraries or historical collections of chemical compounds. Although there are a number of methods for finding and making hits, the most effective ones are based on chemical and biological intuition that has been developed over years of intense practice with the sole purpose of finding new therapeutic agents in teams. Hit to lead and lead optimization more chemistry and analysis are needed to find the triage compounds that don't have hit series with the right SAR and chemical properties for long-term development potential. Then, the remaining hit series need to be improved to have the desired primary activity, secondary activities and physiochemical properties so that the drug can be used in real patients. Chemical modifications can, in this regard, enhance the candidate compounds' recognition and binding geometries (pharmacophores) and, consequently, their affinities for their targets. They can also enhance the molecule's physicochemical properties, which underlie essential pharmacokinetic and toxicologic profiles (such as stability against metabolic degradation, absence of geno, hepatic- and cardiac toxicities, etc.). So that the chemical compound or biologic can be used in studies on humans and animals.

Stages of Synthetic Chemistry

Development and process chemistry the final stages of synthetic chemistry include the production of a lead compound in sufficient quantities and quality to permit large-scale animal testing and subsequent human clinical trials. The most effective drug formulation and the optimization of the synthetic route for industrial production in bulk are two aspects of this. The former remains within the purview of medicinal chemistry, while the latter brings with it the specialization of formulation science (with its components from materials science and physical and polymer chemistry). Process synthesis is a specialization in medicinal chemistry in synthetic chemistry that focuses on adapting and optimizing the synthetic route for industrial scale syntheses of hundreds of kilograms or more. It requires extensive knowledge of acceptable synthetic practice in the context of large-scale reactions (reaction thermodynamics, economics, safety, etc.). The transition to more stringent GMP requirements for material sourcing, handling and chemistry is crucial at this point. Analytical synthetics the synthetic approach utilized in medicinal chemistry is constrained in ways that do not apply to conventional organic synthesis. Safety is of the utmost importance because of the possibility of scaling the preparation. Methodology is influenced by reagents' potential toxicity. The structures of pharmaceuticals are evaluated in a variety of ways, including as a means of predicting efficacy, stability and accessibility. Lipinski's rule of five emphasizes the number of rotatable bonds, surface area, hydrogen bond donors and acceptors and lipophilicity. Other criteria that medicinal chemists use to evaluate or classify their compounds include: Engineered intricacy, chirality, evenness and fragrant ring count. Prior to the actual synthesis of the ligands, computational methods are frequently used for structural analysis of lead compounds. There are many reasons for this, including but not limited to: Time and money (expense, etc.) considerations traditional methods like TLC, NMR, GC/MS and others are used to conduct analysis after the ligand of interest has been synthesized in the laboratory. Traditional medicinal chemistry or pharmaceutical sciences departments, both of which are typically associated with schools of pharmacy, as well as some chemistry departments, offer graduate programs in medicinal chemistry. However, the majority of employed medicinal chemists have graduate degrees in organic chemistry, not chemistry and the majority of positions are in research, where broad synthetic activity occurs and the net is necessarily cast the widest. As a result, the majority of entry-level workers in medicinal chemistry, particularly in the United States, do not receive formal training in medicinal chemistry but do receive the necessary background in medicinal chemistry and pharmacology after employment at entry into their work in a pharmaceutical company, where the company provides its particular understanding or model of medichem training by actively participating in practical synthesis on therapeutic projects. Specialties in computational medicinal chemistry are somewhat similar, but not quite to the same extent as synthetic fields.