Thursday, September 17, 2015

EdX class in medicinal chemistry

Just like last October, Professor Erland Stevens of Davidson College is teaching a class on medicinal chemistry on EdX. Here's a brief syllabus:
The course: D001x Medicinal Chemistry
Host platform: edX
Date: Starts 10/5/15, but enrollment is open until 12/11/15
Length: 8 weeks
Cost: free
Time: 6-8 h/wk for all content, 1 h/wk to peruse the video lectures
Pre-req: chem (organic functional groups, line-angle structures), biology (parts of cell), math (logarithms & exponents) 
Topics (~1 wk per topic):Drug Approval (early drugs, regulatory process, cost, IP concerns)
Enzymes & Receptors (inhibition, Ki, ligand types, Kd)
Pharmacokinetics (Vd, clearance, compartment models)
Metabolism (phase I & II reactions, CYP450 isoforms, prodrugs)
Molecular Diversity (binding, drug space, combi chem, libraries)
Lead Discovery (screening, filtering hits, drug metrics)
Lead Optimization (functional group replacements, isosteres, peptidomimetics)
Case Studies on Selected Drug Classes 
Bonus features: Interviews with pharma professionals, including scientists from Novartis (a partner on the course). Virtual labs involving online tools for predicting drug-relevant activity 
Target audience: pre-med students, graduate students, recent pharma hires, research assistants
Best wishes to those interested.  

3 comments:

  1. Also in this month's offerings: intro to telegraph; theory and application of Atlas Autocode; and coal heaving for fun and profit!

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  2. Pre-meds make sense as a target audience. It's not likely this course will help you get a job at Wyeth, RPR, Parke-Davis, etc!

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  3. On a serious note (snark aside), why would anyone devote time and energy to medchem when everyone who is actually *doing* medchem is madly trying to get into something else?

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