Medicinal Chemistry

Medicinal chemistry deals with the design, optimization and development of chemical compounds for use as drugs. It is inherently a multidisciplinary topic - beginning with the synthesis of potential drugs followed by studies investigating their interactions with biological targets to understand the medicinal effects of the drug, its metabolism and side-effects. Medicinal chemists are focused on drug discovery and development and are concerned with the isolation of medicinal agents found in plants, as well as the creation of new synthetic drug compounds.