Medicinal Chemistry
Medicinal
chemistry deals with the design, optimization and development of chemical
compounds for use as drugs. It is inherently a multidisciplinary topic —
beginning with the synthesis of potential drugs followed by studies
investigating their interactions with biological targets to understand the medicinal
effects of the drug, its metabolism and side-effects. 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; these, with project management, statistics,
and pharmaceutical business practices, systematically oversee altering
identified chemical agents such that after pharmaceutical
formulation, they are safe and efficacious, and therefore suitable for use
in treatment of
disease.