Medicinal chemistry (also known as pharmaceutical chemistry) is the discipline of science at which the chemistry overlaps with pharmacology and other related specialties. This intersection enables the medicinal chemistry to design, synthesis, and development of pharmacologically active agent (drug).
Figure 1 reveals the overlapping of chemistry with other disciplines to deliver the medicinal chemistry in the intersection. Reproduced from http://www.iiar.res.in/?q=node/454
The drugs utilized in everyday therapy are chemical compounds that can grossly divided into three major classes; first of all, the inorganic and the organometallic compounds (e.g. sodium bicarbonate indicated in some cases of hyperacidity, lithium carbonate indicated for manic disorders, and cis-platin indicated for few types of cancer). The second class is the small organic compounds (e.g., simvastatin indicated for hypercholesterolemia, enalapril indicated for hypertensive patients). The third (and could be the most expensive) class is known as “biologics”, which are either natural or recombinant proteomic preparations for instance, (erythropoietin prescribed for anaemic patients resulted from chronic renal illness, insulin prescribed for diabetics).
a:
b:
c:
Figure 2 shows the chemical structures of a: organometallic cis-platin, b: enalaprilic acid, and c: simvastatin. Adapted from PubChem website.
In fact, medicinal chemistry employing all the available tools required to discover new drugs or develop the already existing drugs in an attempt to reduce the side effects and increase the therapeutic effects. The medicinal chemistry tools may encompass the synthetic organic chemistry, combinatorial and computational chemistry, clinical chemistry and enzymology, physical and surface chemistry, molecular and structural biology, many other related disciplines (e.g. pharmacognosy, pharmacology, toxicology, human and veterinary medicine).
To sum-up, the medicinal chemistry is a branch of chemistry that overlaps with many other disciplines of divert sciences to enable the medicinal chemist to design (e.g. use the computational chemistry), synthesize (e.g. use synthetic chemistry or combinatorial chemistry), and develop (e.g. requires full understanding of structure-activity relationship SAR and the quantitative structure-activity relationship QSAR, which can be performed in silico with the aid of computational chemistry) a “fit for purpose” drug that will be suitable for the treatment of existing illness.
References:
Hughes, Jp; Rees, S; Kalindjian, Sb; Philpott, Kl (2011-03-01). “Principles of early drug discovery”. British Journal of Pharmacology. 162 (6): 1239–1249.
http://www.iiar.res.in/?q=node/454
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/441203#section=2D-Structure.
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/54454#section=2D-Structure
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/5388962#section=2D-Structure
http://chemistry.gsu.edu/organicmedicinal-chemistry/
