Organic and Biochemical Pharmaceutical Chemistry.

Catalog description

Semester course; 3 lecture hours. 3 credits. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students. The course presents the fundamentals of synthetic organic chemistry, physical organic chemistry and biochemistry as relevant to the pharmaceutical sciences at the graduate level. The overall goal is to prepare students for advanced specialized courses, work in the laboratory, oral and written comprehensive exams in the graduate program and future work in academia or industry. The course covers organic chemistry topics including structure of small molecules, making and breaking bonds, reaction mechanisms, functional group structures, functional group interconversions and use of various analytical techniques as they relate the characterizing the product of synthetic chemistry transformations. Secondly, the course covers biochemistry topics including basic structure and function of biomolecules, post-translational modifications, metabolism, essential endogenous pathways and immunochemistry. Applications of the fundamentals to real life examples will be an important component of the course.