Drug Formulation & Analytical Techniques

Medicinal Chemistry

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Medicinal chemistry and pharmaceutical chemistry are disciplines at the intersection of chemistry, especially synthetic organic chemistry, and pharmacology and various other biological specialties, where they are involved with design, chemical synthesis and development for market of pharmaceutical agents, or bio-active molecules (drugs).

In particular, medicinal chemistry in its most common practice —focusing on small organic molecules—encompasses synthetic organic chemistry and aspects of natural products and computational chemistry in close combination with chemical biology, enzymology and structural biology, together aiming at the discovery and development of new therapeutic agents. Practically speaking, it involves chemical aspects of identification, and then systematic, thorough synthetic alteration of new chemical entities to make them suitable for therapeutic use. It includes synthetic and computational aspects of the study of existing drugs and agents in development in relation to their bioactivities (biological activities and properties), i.e., understanding their structure-activity relationships (SAR). Pharmaceutical chemistry is focused on quality aspects of medicines and aims to assure fitness for purpose of medicinal products.

Chemicals, the building blocks of the world, represent one of the oldest and largest industries globally. The global market of chemistry is now trending towards quality products and processes with least impact on environment. The global chemical industry is estimated to be US $2.4 trillion dollars contributing significantly in the market growth of US, Europe, and Middle East Countries. The demand for chemical products is highest in the Asia, Japan and Korea. The annual US chemical output alone is US $750 billion dollars. The global chemical industry market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 3.7% by 2020.