PHARMACEUTICAL AND TOXICOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY I

The course provides general principles of medicinal chemistry, evidencing the relationships between drug structure and their therapeutically relevant properties. Analyse the classification, the chemical, physicochemical and biological properties, the mechanism of action, structure-activity relationships and synthesis of main atiinfective and antitumor drugs.
Specific objectives, following Dublin Descriptors, are:
1. Knowledge and understanding: for drug classes object of the course, it is required to know: names, formulas (for simpler compounds), source, use; to recognize complex formulas and understand SAR, chamical, physicochemical, toxicological and metabolic properties, synthesis.
2. Applying knowledge and understanding: for drugs explicitely treated and for similar ones, it is required to be able to: assign a name given a formula and vice versa; to predict chemical and physicochemical properties of drugs and discuss their possible impact on biological properties, including metabolism and toxicity; to propose and discuss possible routes for drug synthesis or production.
3. Making judgements: it is required to procuce proper comments about SARs, metabolism and related toxicity, drug production, chemical and metabolic drug-drug intearaction.
4. Communication skills: it is required to illustrate, also with an original approach, an issue presented during the lessons and to properly answer to questions, rebut criticisms and apply suggestions.
5. Learning skills: the student is expected to learn how to infer general rules (structure-activity and structure-property relationships) from actual cases (drugs), which can be classified following different criteria.; how to manage dynamically his own wealth of knowledge about drug chemistry and classification; how to search and critically assess information on drug structure and properties.