Masters of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Medicinal Chemistry

Program Overview

The Master of Pharmaceutical Sciences program in medicinal chemistry aims to prepare pharmacists with a scientific base and advanced practical experience in the fields of drug design and construction, the mechanism of drug action, and the effect of molecular chemistry on drug administration within the body, in addition to its metabolism, toxicity, and removal from the body. The program prepares the graduate for scientific and professional interaction with specialists and researchers in various medical and pharmaceutical fields. This program is supervised by the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry.

Program Outline

PROGRAM COURSES

PCR 801: SCIENTIFIC WRITING (1+0)

This course aims to demystify the writing process and teach the fundamentals of effective scientific writing. Instructions will focus primarily on the process of writing and publishing scientific manuscripts but grant writing will also be addressed. The course will be presented in two segments: Part (1) teaches students how to write effectively, concisely, and clearly and part (2) takes them through the preparation of an actual scientific manuscript or grant.

PCR 802: ETHICS OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH (1+0)

The course is essentially intended for graduate students in the biomedical sciences. This course delineates important ethical issues of scientific investigation, including intellectual property, plagiarism, conflict of interest, human and animal subjects, and record keeping.

PCR 803: PHARMACEUTICAL STATISTICS (2+0)

An intensive introductory course in statistical methods used in applied research. Emphasis is placed on the principles of statistical reasoning, underlying assumptions, and careful interpretation of results. Topics covered include descriptive statistics, graphical displays of data, introduction to probability, expectations and variance of random variables, confidence intervals and tests for means, differences of means, proportions, differences of proportions, chi-square tests for categorical variables, regression and multiple regressions, an introduction to analysis of variance.

PHC 811: SPECTRAL ANALYSIS OF ORGANIC COMPOUNDS (3+0)

The main objective of this course is to assist in developing the ability of the students to interpret spectra with the study of the principles and advanced techniques of Mass Spectroscopy (MS), Infra Red (IR), Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), and their application in the identification and characterization of organic compounds. The practical part involves sample preparation, instrumental demonstration, spectral analysis of compounds containing various functional groups by mass, infra-red and NMR spectroscopic techniques. Practice problems involve interpretation of IR, MS and NMR spectra of selected medicinal organic compounds.

PHC 812: DRUG DESIGN AND DRUG DEVELOPMENT (2+0)

This course deals with the principles and frameworks of basic, current and future drug design techniques. The approach should provide the student with an understanding of new developments as they become elaborated in future and will be of aid to the student whenever there is a need to appreciate the rationales behind the design of drugs. The course comprises the principles of drug design and drug development through Molecular Modeling aspects. The course includes training sessions on computer cheminformatics programs.

PHC 813: ADVANCED CHEMICAL SYNTHETIC REACTIONS (3+0)

The course is designed to discuss some new reactions and mechanisms in organic chemistry with special emphasis on reactions related to synthesis of pharmaceutical compounds. The course is designed to expose the student to various synthetic and purification techniques in medicinal chemistry.

PHC 814: SPECIAL TOPICS IN MEDICINAL CHEMISTRY (1+0)

This is a versatile course for providing the student with recent knowledge on relevant specialized topics in medicinal chemistry. The topics are selected and specifically-tailored to meet the needs and interests of the students.

PHC 815: BIOPHARMACEUTICAL REACTION MECHANISMS (2+0)

The course is designed to relate chemical phenomena to biological activity and to provide the student with the present state of knowledge with respect to drug mechanism of action. It covers a wide range of enzyme and receptor-based mechanisms of drug action as well as stereo-chemical treatment of various medicinal agents and their targets.