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| Medicinal Chemistry |
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Honors level course, semester-long
Course Goals and Expectations:
Medicinal Chemistry is the study of how new drugs are developed and tested. In this course, you learn the basics of pharmacology, protein biology, drug design and development, and the role of genetics in modern pharmacology. Medicinal chemistry requires an understanding of how chemistry, biology, mathematics and computing interact with each other to allow the scientist to effectively create new pharmaceuticals that will prevent or stop one or more disease conditions.
In this class, students will learn the basic concepts and methods used by medicinal chemists. In the process of doing so, basic and advanced concepts in chemistry, biology, mathematics, and computing will be learned and applied to one or more medicinal chemistry problems. As such, this is an applied course: students will be expected to apply their knowledge of the basic sciences to medicinal chemistry challenges of increasing difficult.
In addition to weekly labs, readings, and quizzes, students will work on a small team to solve a medicinal chemistry "case study". This course makes significant use of computer modeling (computational chemistry). NCSSM is one of the only high schools in the country that teaches a formal course in medicinal chemistry.
Course Syllabus and timeline:
During the course, we will study one major topic approximately every two weeks. Every topic consists of one or more lectures (conducted either over videoconferencing and/or through podcasts); reading of one or more chapters from Gareth Thomas’ Medicinal Chemistry; a small structured computational lab that students do individually or in a small group; a larger lab that is done individually or collaboratively outside of class. There is a short 15-20 minute quiz each week covering information learned during the previous week. On average, students are expected to devote 8-10 hours a week, including both “in class” and out of class activities.
Major topics include:
- Chemistry fundamentals for medicinal chemistry
- Drugs and drug action
- Drug structure and solubility
- Quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSAR)
- Computational chemistry for drug design
- Pharmacokinetics
- Pharmacogenomics
- Case Study work
This class culminates with a large medicinal chemistry challenge problem. Students will apply their skills and knowledge to a case study, in which a problem is posed that must be solved by a group of medicinal chemists. Students will work in teams of 2 or 3 to analyze the problem and prepare a 10-15 page technical report on their scientific findings and analysis of the challenge.
On-campus activities:
During on-campus sessions, students will spend considerable time interacting with the computational chemistry server, improving their ability to set up computational “jobs” and otherwise learn how to deal with the technical challenges of doing computational calculations.
Communication:
Students will interact with the instructor and fellow students using a wide variety of technologies, including email, videoconferencing, chat rooms, podcasts, shared collaboration tools (such as Google Docs), and other resources. All students will have accounts on the North Carolina High School Computational Chemistry server, a computing platform for doing chemistry housed at and maintained by the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. There are no physical (wet) labs conducted in this course.
Prerequisites:
Students should have at least one semester of chemistry, preferably at the honors/AP level. Students should also have reasonable mathematics background, preferably at the algebra level or higher. Ability to work in a computing environment is not only a requirement for success in any distance learning program, but it is also important in doing computational chemistry. You will spend a considerable number of hours interacting with the computer in this course!
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Course Instructor
- Mr. Robert Gotwals
Mr. Robert Gotwals' primary focus is in the area of computational quantum
chemistry and the use of high performance computing in chemistry. He earned
a Bachelor's
of Science in Chemistry from East Carolina University. He also has a Master's
degree in Education of the Hearing-Impaired and a Master's degree in
Science Education, both from the University of Rochester. His major project
is the development of resources for students and teachers in computational
chemistry, including
the development of the North
Carolina High School Computational Chemistry server, and the national
computational chemistry server. He has served as a Computational Chemistry
Educator for the Shodor Education Foundation, Inc. and as Associate Director
and Senior Science Educator for the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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