Medicines from Nature / Pharmaceutical Process Chemistry
| Code | School | Level | Credits | Semesters |
| CHEM4025 | Chemistry | 4 | 10 | Spring UK |
- Code
- CHEM4025
- School
- Chemistry
- Level
- 4
- Credits
- 10
- Semesters
- Spring UK
Summary
This module consists of two taught topics in advanced organic chemistry: Medicines from Nature and Pharmaceutical Process Chemistry.
Medicines from Nature. To provide an appreciation of the importance of natural products from plants, micro-organisms and marine life in providing leads for today’s drugs and medicines. How the discovery of biological activity in a natural product can be turned into a useful medicine. The topic will include descriptions of the biosynthesis and total synthesis of natural products.
Pharmaceutical Process Chemistry. This topic explores the role of the chemist in developing a viable commercial synthesis of medicines starting from a small scale. After a description of the place process chemistry takes within drug discovery as a whole, the topic will cover the following: Selection of chemical routes to medicines and assessment of their worth; Safety; Reagent selection; synthesis of chirally pure compounds; How reactions and reaction workups may be optimised.
Target Students
MSci Chemistry OR MSci Medicinal and Biological Chemistry OR MSci Chemistry and Molecular Physics OR MSci Biochemistry and Biological Chemistry OR Natural Sciences AND Level 4 students.
Classes
- Two 1-hour lectures each week for 10 weeks
Assessment
- 100% Exam 1 (2-hour): Second re-assessment: If a further re-assessment is allowed by satisfying the conditions of Undergraduate Course Regulation 19, the form of the further re-assessment for this module will be 100% coursework.
Assessed by end of spring semester
Educational Aims
To give an overview of the history of natural products and their importance to the discovery of medicines. To describe the relationship of natural products and how they are synthesised in nature compared to modern sustainable synthetic chemistry. To delineate the principles of process chemistry as applied to the pharmaceutical industry. To consider six main aspects of process chemistry: Safety, Environmental; Legal; Economics; Control; Throughput and consider how these aspects can affect the viability of a synthesis and lead to the development of alternatives that are safer, have lower environmental impact, and are more efficient and cost-effective.Learning Outcomes
On completing this module, the student will be able to:
• Appreciate the historical context of natural products chemistry and the types of structure that are “pre-disposed” to interact with proteins and thereby influence or aid in our design of drugs;
• Understand how selected natural products are made in nature (biosynthesis), synthesised by chemists and modified to give analogues with improved properties;
• Evaluate critically different routes or alternative reagents used in synthesis;
• Describe how the safety of chemical processes may be assessed;
• Be able to calculate the environmental impact of a reaction or synthesis;
• Recognise the strengths and weaknesses of alternative chemical processes;
• To understand how reactions conditions and workups may be optimised.