There are no pre-requisites for this module to be added

You will develop a demonstrable understanding of the principles of drug development at the molecular level and the practices currently adopted in industry. You will learn to appraise and analyse physical parameters and data on drug candidate molecules. Origins and new sources of drugs; natural products and new pharmaceuticals; the drug discovery and development process. You will learn about structure-based drug design; pharmacophore-based drug design; QSAR; physicochemical properties and drug design: electronic factors, lipophilicity, partition coefficient, steric parameters, prediction of drug-receptor interactions, ligand binding studies, molecular modelling and stereochemistry. Computational techniques: analysis of conformational space, molecular graphics and the visualisation of molecules. Molecular diversity. Combinatorial libraries and modern methods of synthesis. You will also learn to critically appraise published literature.

Upon completion of this module you will be able to

LO1: Evaluate contemporary principles and methodologies in the drug design and development process.

LO2: Perform literature database searches with the aim of critically reviewing literature.

LO3: Analyse inhibitor-protein interactions and critically compare them to published literature.

LO4: Apply drug design concepts to analyse computed binding interactions, compare them to published drug-protein complexes, and apply thermodynamic concepts for computer-aided drug design results.

LO5: Apply a range of specialised research techniques and critically analyse the obtained data.