Organic Chemistry for Drug World
Organic chemistry has vital importance because the most of the biological molecules in living
systems are largely made of organic basis. Therefore, organic chemistry is very crucial in
discovering new drug candidate molecules for the treatment of a vast of diseases.
The organic chemistry course in Faculty of Pharmacy aimed to lead students to be aware of the
fundamentals of “Drug World” for their preparation to medicinal features of the diseases on
molecular levels based on chemical structures.
Organic chemistry plays very crucial role in the pharmaceutical industry to discover new
molecules and the persistence to be one of the key driving forces in the drug development
progression.
However, the detailed nature of that role is experiencing a visible change, not only because of
the new synthetic methods and technologies now available to the synthetic and medicinal
chemist, but also in several key areas, particularly in biochemistry, pharmacology, metabolism
and toxicology, as well as bioinformatics. Therefore, pharmaceutical and medicinal chemists
make several related arrangements with the ever more rapid dispatch of molecular assay data
that ate supposed to effect of their assignments on creating new molecules for specific
biological activities.
We already know now organic chemistry is the science of the arrangement, structure, properties
and reactions of substances, especially of atomic and molecular systems. Our life itself is full of
chemistry, and life is the contemplation of a series of uninterrupted biochemical progressions.
From the structure of the cell to the entire organisms, the presence of organic chemistry is
prominent and people are built anatomically and physiologically by mostly organic materials. All
living organisms are constituted of abundant number of organic molecules. Evolution of life
initiates from one particular organic molecule named a nucleotide. Nucleotides join together to
form the building blocks of our life. Our identities, heredities and continuation of generations are
all managed by chemistry. In our everyday life, whatever we see, use or consume is the gift of
research in chemistry for thousands of years. In fact, chemistry is applied everywhere in modern
life. From the coloring of our clothes to the shapes of our PCs, all are possible due to chemistry.
It has played a major role in pharmaceutical advances, forensic science and modern agriculture.
Diseases and their remedies have also been a part of human lives. Chemistry plays an
important role in understanding diseases and their remedies, i.e. drugs. The focus of this
section is given to the role of chemistry in modern medicine.
Drugs that we use for the healing of various illnesses are chemical compounds, either organic
or inorganic. Nevertheless, most drugs are based on organic structural features. Aspirin is a
well-known example. It has possibly the widespread usage as an analgesic drug as well as
many other usages in some cardiovascular related diseases. Aspirin, with structural simplicity
and low cost, is chemically known as acetylsalicylic acid, an organic molecule. The precursor of
aspirin is salicin, which is found in willow tree bark. However, aspirin can easily be synthesized
from phenol using the Kolbe reaction. As we progress through various text notes for this course,
we will come across a series of examples of “Drug World” with several sophisticated examples
and their chemical and physical properties, in the oncoming course times.
