Coming Soon: Free Online MedChem Course
(Looks like I get the same emails as Chemjobber does!)
Prof. Erland Stevens of Davidson College will be offering an introductory medchem course through EdX:
The seven-week course starts on March 10th. Each week has about 1 hour of video and a number of accompanying web pages.
The course is strictly an introduction. A short syllabus is below.
Week 1 – brief history of medicinal chemistry, introduction to drug development process and regulatory approval
Week 2 – proteins (enzymes and receptors) as drug targets, enzyme inhibition, ligand-receptor binding theory
Week 3 – pharmacokinetics (compartment models, Vd, clearance)
Week 4 – metabolism, phase I, phase II, prodrugs, genetic variability
Week 5 – drug-target complementarity, drugs as part of chemical space, chemical libraries
Week 6 – lead discovery, screening, filtering hits by metrics/structural alerts/predicted PK, SOSA, natural products
Week 7 – lead optimization, functional group replacements, isosteres, directed libraries, peptidomimetics
The overall goal of the course is to get a student up to speed to watch a medicinal chemistry lecture (and maybe even ask a question at the end).
**If anyone signs up and completes this course, I'd love to get their impressions of it for a follow-up post!
