Medicinal Chemistry

This book has been designed to serve the needs of pharmacology students as an introductory manual on the field of medicinal or pharmaceutical chemistry. Written to meet the challenges of the ever changing curricula of medicinal chemistry course, it focuses on providing readers with a grasp over the fundamentals of medicinal chemistry, with a focus on the drug development process from the perspective of the pharmacist as a therapeutic clinical consultant, rather than as a mere chemist. 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 bioactive molecules (drugs). The discipline combines expertise from chemistry and pharmacology to identify, develop and synthesize chemical agents that have a therapeutic use and to evaluate the properties of existing drugs. This book is primarily intended for the students and professionals in the pharmaceutical industry. Assuming little prior knowledge of the subject, the book gives a concise introduction to the chemistry of therapeutically active compounds. It also includes a brief discussion on drug development from the discovery to research stage leading to final product.