Pharmaceutical Chemistry Laboratory For Pharmacy Students In Nigeria

Pharmaceutical chemistry lab

Pharmaceutical Chemistry (P.H.C) is a major and very important department in pharmacy school. It encompasses drug design, synthesis, and the evaluation of drug efficacy and safety. Technically, it evolves from pharmacognosy and traditional medicine whereby natural remedies are extracted from plants. The extracts were isolated, purifies, and identified.

The knowledge of isolation and purification including identification relies on knowledge acquired from theory class and laboratory practical classes. Most schools of pharmacy have two well-equipped dedicated laboratories for PCH. They are named physical and organic chemistry laboratory. Both laboratories put together will equip the students in synthetic, organic, inorganic, and analytical chemistry. These include the identification, purification, and synthesis of medicinal compounds using different techniques or experiments.
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Physical Pharmaceutical chemistry Laboratory

This laboratory uses modern equipment in identification and qualification of chemical compounds using analytical methods. The results are interpreted and used to identify a compound including some of its physical attributes. The purity of a known compound can be detected in this laboratory.

Experiments

Some notable experiments in this laboratory include:
Infrared spectrophotometry
Ultraviolet/Visible (U.V) spectrophotometry
Spectroscopy

Instruments

Ph meter
Colorimeter
Conductimeter
Magnetic stirrer
UV lamp
Photochemical reactor
High power liquid chromatography
Thin layer chromatography
Refractometer
Polarimeter

Organic Pharmaceutical Chemistry Laboratory

This laboratory is more or less experiments very common in secondary school days like titration. The main difference is that the titration is not just the basic secondary school type of acid base reaction. Titration experiments can be used to determine the presence of a compound, the purity, the identity, and others. Also in this laboratory are experiments that use extraction methods of herbal products and the test for the presence of certain compounds of importance such as glycosides, tannins etc.
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Other experiments involve the synthesis of known compounds using known pathways such as Friedel-craft synthesis and Grignard reaction where functional groups can be determined using reaction mechanism of different drugs. It involves combining one or more chemicals in a controlled condition to achieve a particular product(s).

Experiments

Acid base titration
Redox based titration
Blank and back titration
Test for chemicals from natural sources
Complexometric titration
Freezing point and melting point

Instruments

Water bath
Hot air dryer
Ph meter
Oven
Hot plate
Water circulator
Coolant top loading balance
Analytical balance vacuum pump fume cup board
Rotary evaporator
Water distiller
Soxhlet extractor
Heating mantles
Potentiometer (titration)
Centrifuge
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