The Bachelor of Science Program in Pharmacy at the University of Illinois at Chicago contained two quarters of Pharmacognosy and one-quarter of Medicinal Chemistry. The Doctor of Pharmacy Program has integrated these subjects into a single two semester sequence with considerable change in content. This course is entitled "Chemical Aspects of Drug Action". PMMP 622 is designed to bring to you material from the Doctor of Pharmacy course, which was not presented in the previous curriculum. This course will present to you: a) topics not previously studied in our B.S. curriculum and b) newly discovered scientific information which is essential to your understanding of modern concepts concerning the biochemical mechanism of action of existing drugs and those developed in the future.

Since the previously offered courses in Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy were revised quite often, the amount of new material in this course will vary for students depending on the time which they elected Pharmacognosy and Medicinal Chemistry in the Bachelor of Science Program and the content of these courses. This is also true for people who completed their B.S. at other institutions. If some of the material seems repetitious to you, please understand that it may not to your colleagues.

In this course, the material will be divided into lessons. Each lesson will have listed its major objectives and the new material to be presented will be preceded by a review of concepts, presented in your previous curriculum that are pertinent to the material in the lesson. Each lesson will also contain problems to be solved or questions to be answered. In some cases the correct answers will be available and in others you must call or send the answers to your instructor for grading or answers.

II. GENERAL COURSE OBJECTIVES :

While specific objectives will be included in each lesson, these are general objectives or requirements which will apply throughout the course.

1. The student should be able to reproduce the formulas denoted by as asterisk in the title of the figure in which they are presented. These are lead compounds which have served as models for the development of synthetic medicinal agents, general structures which represent the structural requirements for a specific pharmacological action or offer some clue to receptor binding or intrinsic activity.

2. From a structure, the student should be able to suggest the biological activity of the compounds.

3. The student should be able to reproduce the biosynthetic pathways of an important neurotransmitter or hormone as illustrated in the Figure depicting them.

4. From a given biosynthetic pathway, the student should be able to identify the reaction and enzyme inhibited by a drug affecting that pathway.

5. From a given biosynthetic pathway, the student should be able to identify the advantages of inhibiting a specific reaction or enzyme over that of another.

6. The student should demonstrate his knowledge of advances in receptor science.

7.The student should be able to identify the advantages which a particular molecular modification provides for the action of a drug.

III. Textbooks :

Foye, W.O, Lemke, T.L., Williams, D.A. Principles of Medicinal Chemistry. Fourth Edition. Williams & Wilkins, 1995.
The textbook provides a concise and up-to-date compendium dedicated to Medicinal Chemistry. The course manual contains references to this text for required reading assignments as well as review material.

The College of Pharmacy
The University of Illinois at Chicago

UICPHARM@uic.edu
Last modified: July 02, 1998