Undergraduate Course: Advanced Medicinal Chemistry (CHEM10072)
Course Outline
| School | School of Chemistry |
College | College of Science and Engineering |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | A course of lectures on how medicines are designed and developed, with emphasis on the key properties required for developing a successful medicine. This course will contain units that discuss: how physicochemical properties affect drug design and activity; the use of computational and structure-based drug design; common reactions that are widely used in medicinal chemistry; the different types of drug targets that are currently druggable; emerging new drug classes that can expand the types of disease targets we can modulate; consideration of the pharmacokinetic properties of a drug and how a drug can be translated from the lab to clinic. |
| Course description |
The course contains five individual 5-lecture units with content as outlined above, each with an associated tutorial. Students must complete assessed coursework during the semester. The examination in May consists of 5 questions of 20 marks each, from which 4 must be chosen.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2026/27, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 25,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 7.5,
Summative Assessment Hours 3,
Revision Session Hours 6,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
154 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
100 %,
Coursework
0 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Written Exam 100 % |
| Feedback |
Each lecture module has an associated small-group tutorial. This will provide students with practice at problem-solving and tackling exam-like questions. It is also an opportunity for students to discuss any issues pertaining to the lecture course. Additional pre-exam revision sessions and/or individual meetings will be offered by the lecturers. |
| Exam Information |
| Exam Diet |
Paper Name |
Minutes |
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| Main Exam Diet S2 (April/May) | Advanced Medicinal Chemistry (SS1) | 180 | |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Show an understanding of the principal theories and concepts behind the application of chemistry to medicine, including the discovery of new therapeutic targets, the development of drugs, prodrugs and drug-like lead compounds, and common routes to drug delivery and administration.
- Apply this chemical knowledge to: explain the properties of, propose synthetic routes to, explain the mode of action of, and propose new targets for, a range of drugs and drug-like lead compounds.
- Critically review current practices in the application of chemistry to medicine and demonstrate an ability to analyse or assess complex problems based on diverse, or limited, datasets.
- Interpret and use a wide range of numerical, graphical and schematic (including chemical structures and curly arrows) data and communicate this effectively.
- Show an appreciation of complex ethical and professional issues relating to the application of chemistry to medicine in accordance with current professional and/or ethical codes or practices.
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Reading List
Any good medicinal chemistry textbook; e.g. Medicinal Chemistry 6th Ed (Patrick), An Introduction to Drug Synthesis (Patrick), The Organic Chemistry of Drug Design and Drug Action 3rd Ed (Silverman), Drug Design and Development (Rostron)
Computational methods covered by "Drug Design - Structure and Ligand Based Approaches" Kenneth M Merz Jr, Dagmar Ringe, Charles H. Reynolds, Cambridge University Press 2010
Reading lists pertaining to each course unit will be given by the lecturers.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
1. Note-taking skills.
2. Numerical data interpretation and analysis.
3. Unseen problem solving skills.
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| Keywords | medicinal chemistry,chemical biology,pharmacology,computational drug design,drug discovery |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Alison Hulme
Tel: (0131 6)50 4711
Email: Alison.Hulme@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Zoe Burger
Tel: (0131 6)51 7257
Email: zoe.burger@ed.ac.uk |
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