Professor Marc W. Harrold, BS, Pharm, PhD, is
Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the Mylan School of Pharmacy,
Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Professor Harrold is the
2011 winner of the Omicron Delta Kappa ""Teacher of the Year""
award at Duquesne University. He is also a multi-year recipient of
the ""TOPS"" (Teacher of the Pharmacy School) award at the Mylan
School of Pharmacy.
Robin M. Zavod, PhD, is Associate Professor for
Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Chicago College of Pharmacy,
Midwestern University, Downers Grove, IL, USA where she was awarded
the 2012 Outstanding Faculty of the Year award. Professor Zavod
also serves on the adjunct faculty for Elmhurst College and the
Illinois Institute of Technology. She currently serves as
Editor-in-Chief of the journal Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and
Learning.
Basic Concepts of Medicinal Chemistry By Marc W. Harrold and Robin
M. ZavodPharmaceutical Journal, Volume 290, Page 343, March 23,
2013 Reviewer: Laurence A Goldberg is a pharmaceutical consultant
from Bury, Lancashire All you need to know about medicinal
chemistry. This book focuses solely on the basic, fundamental
concepts governing the discipline of medicinal chemistry. Every
drug is a chemical structure that contains numerous functional
groups arranged in a specific manner. These functional groups
determine the interactions of the drug molecule with its biological
target, its pharmacological action, the route by which it is
administered, the extent to which it is metabolized and the
presence or absence of specific adverse reactions or drug
interactions. The chapters in this book have been carefully
organized to allow the reader to gain knowledge progressively about
the chemistry of drug molecules, with each chapter building on the
previous one. The first chapter reviews the numbering of alicyclic
and heterocyclic rings, the designation of aromatic ring positions
and steroid nomenclature, while the second chapter focuses on the
chemical characteristics of functional groups and the roles they
play in drug action. The following chapters identify those
functional groups that are acidic or basic, review a strategy to
calculate the extent to which they are ionised in a given
environment and then examine how these characteristics contribute
to the overall solubility of the drug molecule. Subsequent chapters
discuss the types of binding interactions that can occur between a
drug molecule and its biological target and how stereochemistry of
the molecule can also affect its interaction with biological
targets. Emphasis is placed on the pharmacological and therapeutic
differences that can occur between enantiomers. A chapter is
devoted to exploring the metabolism of drug molecules by various
enzymes. It identifies the functional groups that are susceptible
to each type of metabolic transformation, enabling the reader to
become more proficient in predicting the possible metabolic
transformations for a given drug molecule. In the final chapter,
the concept of structure-activity relationships is introduced along
with the concepts of molecular modification to design new drugs and
analogues of existing drugs. This book is extremely well structured
and easy to follow. It navigates through medicinal chemistry in a
way that makes the subject easy to understand. It will be a great
asset to students embarking upon a healthcare career or to
practitioners who need to brush up on medicinal chemistry.--
(03/23/2013)
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