都柏林圣三一学院

What is Medicinal Chemistry?

Medicinal chemists are the creative talent behind the modern pharmaceutical industry. As well as being expert chemists, they have extensive knowledge of molecular design, drug synthesis and the biological function of drugs.

Medicinal Chemistry: The course for you?

Yes, if your dream is to design and prepare new drugs, if you want to understand the biological mechanisms by which they operate, if you have a natural flair for chemistry and are interested in developing the skills and expert knowledge relevant to the pharmaceutical industry.

Graduate skills and career opportunities

As with graduates in other branches of chemistry, the skills acquired during this degree programme will make you highly attractive to employers in a wide variety of areas. In addition to the pharmaceutical industry itself, business, finance, administration and teaching are all possibilities that are open to you as a Medicinal Chemistry graduate. Former graduates of this course are working in companies such as Pfizer, Abbot, GlaxoSmithKline, Servier, and Deloitte and Touche.

Medicinal Chemistry would serve as an excellent primary degree for a graduate course in medicine. Our graduates can also pursue postgraduate degrees either in the School of Chemistry or in other world-class research institutions.

Your degree and what you’ll study

You will study foundation courses in chemistry, biology and mathematics in the first two years.

THIRD YEAR

In third year, the course will branch off into more specialised aspects of medicinal chemistry, although there will be considerable overlap with the Chemistry degree. This overlap is primarily in organic chemistry; less emphasis will be placed on physical and inorganic chemistry in order to allow for the delivery of medicinal-chemistry modules.

Your specialised medicinal chemistry modules will include:

• Basic Principles of Medicinal Chemistry
• Biochemistry (Protein Structure and Function)
• The Autonomic Nervous System
• The Fundamentals of Computational Drug Design
• Anti-Viral and Anti-Cancer Agents
• Anti-Microbial and Anti-Infective Agents (compounds that can combat the microorganisms that cause disease)
• Anti-Malarial Chemistry (study of the development of drugs in this area)
• Steroid Drugs (study of drugs based on the steroid skeleton)
• Industrial Medicinal Chemistry

Lectures are complemented by laboratory experiments, where you will gain experience in more sophisticated preparative chemical techniques and will also be able to carry out your own spectroscopic analyses and computer-based modelling.

FOURTH YEAR

In fourth year, in addition to core chemistry modules, you will cover the medicinal chemistry of the cardiovascular and central nervous systems, combinatorial chemistry and drug delivery, as well as computational medicinal chemistry and modern analytical methods. Case studies in medicinal chemistry (focusing on specific diseases or drug types) will also feature in your programme.

Practical work in the final year will consist of a Capstone research project. This may be carried out either in Trinity under the supervision of a member of staff, in a chemistry department at an overseas university, or in a commercial laboratory.