pharmaceutical chemistry

[skanda]

Hello, i am finishing school in a few months and i am facing an issue. I am interested in a career in drug design and drug develoment, so i am wondering whether the pharmaceuticals or chemistry department is the best choice.Some tell me that pharmaceutical chemisty courses are necessary from this early stage.Others insist, that most of the scientists working in the particular field are organic chemists and not pharmaceutical chemists.Every information or opinion whould help.Thank you for your time.

 

 

[mississippichem]

Hello, i am finishing school in a few months and i am facing an issue. I am interested in a career in drug design and drug develoment, so i am wondering whether the pharmaceuticals or chemistry department is the best choice.Some tell me that pharmaceutical chemisty courses are necessary from this early stage.Others insist, that most of the scientists working in the particular field are organic chemists and not pharmaceutical chemists.Every information or opinion whould help.Thank you for your time.

 

I'm no medicinal chemist. However, I think I can safely assume that organic chemistry and bio-chemistry are good things to study if you are interested in the drug design/development business.

 

Pharmaceutical chemistry is not so much a discipline as it is an application of organic and biochemistry. If you want some good, though informal, reading on the topic, read this blog regularly:

 

In the Pipeline

 

The guy is a great blogger and regularly talks about issues in the pharmaceutical industry such as employment, politics, and the general state of the industry.

[hypervalent_iodine]

You don't need medicinal chemistry courses to be able to work in drug design and development. The majority of work that is performed under that banner is organic chemistry coupled with various in vitro assays to determine bioavailability, P450 metabolism, etc. There are some aspects of drug design and development that aren't covered in your typical organic chemistry courses that you will either learn in time or that would be beneficial for you to pick up at some point in your degree/before you start your career. For instance, it would be useful to know what sort of chemical modifications one might choose to make to increase epithelial partitioning or decrease enzymatic degradation of an orally administered drug.

 

These are, however, things easily picked up for someone with a background in organic chemistry simply by looking at the literature or reading any number of medicinal chemistry texts. I doubt you'd be discriminated against for not knowing everything pertaining to the finer points of drug design at the start of a new job. Typically when you're starting out on a given project, your supervisor will provide you with a starting point and some direction of exactly what it is you'll be doing in the lab. In addition, the first week or so of a new project is mostly reading up on the literature, so you tend to learn the specific theories and concepts as you go.

 

In short, I would stick with the chemistry department and maybe pick up one or two pharmaceutical chemistry courses along the way. If you have a solid basis in organic chemistry and a little molecular cell biology, doing a only one or two senior level courses in medicinal chemistry, or even no med. chem. courses at all, should be no problem in terms of your career.

[skanda]

Hypervalent_iodine i saw that you studied in australia and i have been thinking about studying there. Could you give me some information about the quality of the education there?

[hypervalent_iodine]

Is this for undergraduate or postgraduate?

 

As with everywhere, it depends on where you go and what area you chose to take up. In terms of the quality of education, well honestly I don't know if my opinion is very well-informed on this issue, as I've only ever studied at the one university (the same one I still attend for my postgrad work). I think, from my renewed perspective as a tutor, the tertiary education system here does its job reasonably well. If you go to the right university and put in the right amount of motivation for the right reasons, you should come out of it very satisfied. There are a few short-comings, but these are easily overcome with the right amount of investment and don't necessarily apply to every university.

 

If you are looking at studying chemistry in Australia, you really can't go past some of the Melbourne based universities - specifically the University of Melbourne or Monash. Otherwise, UNSW or the place I attend, UQ, are both great alternatives.

 

Speaking from my perspective as a UQ student, I can say that the course content here is definitely adequate and the lecturers, very approachable. This is particularly handy if you ever want to get some hands-on experience in a lab. I can't speak for other Australian universities, but the lecturers that I've had here have always been very welcoming to the idea of letting undergrads in their labs, which is great in terms of the learning experience and contacts you get out of it.

[skanda]

I am actually thinking about both undergraduate and postgraduate, anyway thank you for everything and i wish you all the luck with your postgraduate studies.

 

 

[The_Enantiomer]

I have a question which is similar to this. At the current time I'm torn between Pharmaceutical research and practicing in a pharmacy. Would one not want to get a Pharm D when they would be doing research? The Pharm D path does (At least at the university I've been looking at) lead you down towards the practice of pharmacy, but it does have many hours in a lab.

 

So, I guess the main question is, for pharmaceutical research, would a Pharm D be helpful/necessary?

[hypervalent_iodine]

Firstly, I love your avatar. We have that printed and stuck to the lab door with, 'Carol, the patron saint of chemistry' written on it.

 

I have no real experience in pharmacy courses, so I can't give you an in-depth answer to your question, but I will try to do what I can.

 

All pharmacy degrees I know of include lab work, so I don't think your university is unique in that. I also know that such degrees can lead into doing both research and clinical careers. How helpful it it is really depends on how you use it. My advise would be to try and get a hand in doing some research in one of your professor's labs early on and get a feel for whether or not you like it. The easiest way to do that is to make appointments to see the people who do something you like and speak to them face to face.

 

The other way you can get into pharmaceutical based research is with a chemistry or even a biology degree, depending on what you want to do. However, since you are still undecided on whether or not you want to do research, I would stick with the pharmacy degree and go from there.

[Suxamethonium]

If it's any help, I'm happy to share a bit of my experiences, but I'm also australian- but it might be helpful, who knows?

 

Anyway, I ended up doing medicinal chemistry as an unergraduate course (Chemistry faculty), and whilst I can only speak for my institution (uni of wollongong) it was for the most part:

• biology with emphasis in bio-chem, gentics and cellular biology and
• chemistry- fairly broadly, we covered general- 1st year chem, physical, analytical and inorganic chem. And in third year covered medicinal and organic chemistry in much greater depth (although, If im honest, I wish there had have been more organic subjects).
• The rest were subjects thrown in to increase or give a base to the understanding of the body and the normal function of the targets that drugs and medicines act on. So anatomy and physiology. As well as specific subjects on what drugs are and how they act- pharmacology.

If you ended up doing degrees in medical science or courses with similar structures you would probably be in a good position to move into that area of study/research.

 

As for post grad, I'm about to start an Masters of Pharm degree that could take me into clinical pharmacy, dispensing pharmacy, industrial pharmaceuticals, research pharmacy or prosibly a heap more (following an internship hence allowing me to aquire registration). I think once you have got the required credentials, there is no real limit to how you can apply what you've studied except by what careers are available to your disposal. I can't really talk much more about it because I don't start it for another month, but I hope I was somewhat helpful.