1. Introduction to Medicinal Chemistry
Medicines are used to treat diseases and drugs are the active ingredients which are used in medicines.
medicinal chemistry includes isolation of compounds of nature. A lot of drugs or medicines are acquired
from nature and so you need to isolate these compounds from the natural sources. Once you have a small
molecule or a drug, you also need to look at the structure activity relationship which is basically nothing
but trying to figure out which structure leads to the best activity. The other way to look at how to discover
a drug is completely by accident or by serendipity. modern medicinal chemistry relies a lot on how to
rationally design a drug. Once the drug has been discovered, it goes through a very long road and it takes
years and years for it to get from the point of discovery to. we will look at the entire process right from
the idea to where it gets into how it gets. Quinine structure can be the foundation for discovering new
drugs. This is an example of how one could use traditional medicine to actually discover a drug. The last
decade was among the first line treatments for malaria. There is another example of serendipitous
discovery.
Alexander Fleming observed that mold that was formed was able to lysed bacteria. This led to the
discovery that he hypothesizes that the mold must secrete a substance which repressed the growth of
bacteria, which then repressed growth. The structure of penicillin was discovered by Edward Abraham in
1942. A lot of medicinal chemistry relied on chance to discover new drugs. So if you see the example of
Alexander Fleming or in the case of the discovery of Librium, it was completely by chance. So there are
other ways in which one could do this one is to look at metabolism. major origins of modern drug
discovery are apothecaries who formulates and dispenses the materials required by physicians, surgeons
and patients. Modern drug discovery does not rely exclusively on these processes, but they would want to
do what is known as a rational drug design. proteins are important starting. Starting points for us to make
compounds that can go and interact with a protein.
Transporters become very important targets for or potentially important targets where we can discover a
new drug. The other major target other than proteins are nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA. nucleic
acids are very important to store information and RNA can also catalyze reactions. So therefore, if one
could develop a molecule which can interact with DNA, then it is possible that we may be able to
discover a drug. Drug discovery in a nutshell is about finding the right lead compounds. Most assays or
most modern discovery methods depend on cellular assays. From there you build up the model go into
cells, go into tissues and so on and so forth. animal models are used pretty much towards the end of the
preclinical evaluation. Unlike what used to happen previously. One of the approaches to finding a lead is
to use the natural ligand or substrate for the target. The other way to do this is to look at substances which
, are known to interact with the target of interest. So therefore, using dopamine as the starting point one
could develop a new lead compound or even a drug. There are other alternate methods which one could
use which is known as screening.
In the past 20 or 30 years there have been a large number of technological advances which allow for
thousands of compounds to be screened in parallel. So screening can also be carried out on responses to
cells, so here we don t have any prior knowledge of what the target is. These compounds whose structure
we already know because we have assembled the portfolio of compounds or these compounds are taken
for further structural modifications. In fragment based screening what typically happens is that there is
prior knowledge of the structure of the protein or receptor. Once we have this information that becomes
the foundation for us to screen for more molecules. Of course the very popular method is to use
computational approaches. So there are certain interactions which are important in the binding site, and
those interactions are exploited to design compounds to hit them to hit the target.
Medicines are used to treat diseases and drugs are the active ingredients which are used in medicines.
medicinal chemistry includes isolation of compounds of nature. A lot of drugs or medicines are acquired
from nature and so you need to isolate these compounds from the natural sources. Once you have a small
molecule or a drug, you also need to look at the structure activity relationship which is basically nothing
but trying to figure out which structure leads to the best activity. The other way to look at how to discover
a drug is completely by accident or by serendipity. modern medicinal chemistry relies a lot on how to
rationally design a drug. Once the drug has been discovered, it goes through a very long road and it takes
years and years for it to get from the point of discovery to. we will look at the entire process right from
the idea to where it gets into how it gets. Quinine structure can be the foundation for discovering new
drugs. This is an example of how one could use traditional medicine to actually discover a drug. The last
decade was among the first line treatments for malaria. There is another example of serendipitous
discovery.
Alexander Fleming observed that mold that was formed was able to lysed bacteria. This led to the
discovery that he hypothesizes that the mold must secrete a substance which repressed the growth of
bacteria, which then repressed growth. The structure of penicillin was discovered by Edward Abraham in
1942. A lot of medicinal chemistry relied on chance to discover new drugs. So if you see the example of
Alexander Fleming or in the case of the discovery of Librium, it was completely by chance. So there are
other ways in which one could do this one is to look at metabolism. major origins of modern drug
discovery are apothecaries who formulates and dispenses the materials required by physicians, surgeons
and patients. Modern drug discovery does not rely exclusively on these processes, but they would want to
do what is known as a rational drug design. proteins are important starting. Starting points for us to make
compounds that can go and interact with a protein.
Transporters become very important targets for or potentially important targets where we can discover a
new drug. The other major target other than proteins are nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA. nucleic
acids are very important to store information and RNA can also catalyze reactions. So therefore, if one
could develop a molecule which can interact with DNA, then it is possible that we may be able to
discover a drug. Drug discovery in a nutshell is about finding the right lead compounds. Most assays or
most modern discovery methods depend on cellular assays. From there you build up the model go into
cells, go into tissues and so on and so forth. animal models are used pretty much towards the end of the
preclinical evaluation. Unlike what used to happen previously. One of the approaches to finding a lead is
to use the natural ligand or substrate for the target. The other way to do this is to look at substances which
, are known to interact with the target of interest. So therefore, using dopamine as the starting point one
could develop a new lead compound or even a drug. There are other alternate methods which one could
use which is known as screening.
In the past 20 or 30 years there have been a large number of technological advances which allow for
thousands of compounds to be screened in parallel. So screening can also be carried out on responses to
cells, so here we don t have any prior knowledge of what the target is. These compounds whose structure
we already know because we have assembled the portfolio of compounds or these compounds are taken
for further structural modifications. In fragment based screening what typically happens is that there is
prior knowledge of the structure of the protein or receptor. Once we have this information that becomes
the foundation for us to screen for more molecules. Of course the very popular method is to use
computational approaches. So there are certain interactions which are important in the binding site, and
those interactions are exploited to design compounds to hit them to hit the target.
