Project Work In Pharmaceutical Or Medicinal Chemistry

Pharmaceutical or medicinal chemistry project

Be it pharmaceutical chemistry or medicinal chemistry (P.C.H), this department is one of the tough department in pharmacy. Project work reflects this stance. Drug design and development rest on the shoulders of PCH. Project works involve investigation of products of medicinal value. It could be herbal or brand drug. This post will expatiate more on them as it happens live and direct.

Projects consist of research into trends in the field and bench work. However, the survey method in PCH may be restricted to more advanced projects, as I have never seen one in this department.

The project works range from the extraction of natural products, synthesis of chemical compounds for use as receptors, transporters, or sensors for ionic or neutral species.

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Drug designs and development have several techniques that no single post will be able to exhaust all that the student should know. However, the project in PCH follows the following pattern.

As usual, you need a project supervisor to approve your topic and then your project proposal. Once this stage is successful, the next stage is the project work. Now, look at the following.

Research Into Trends

Every department in pharmacy has topics for students who want to go for research. However, they are not very common. It involves screening articles for pieces of information to give a definitive conclusion.

Bench Work

When the work involves natural substance such as herbal extracts, then the whole process is very similar with that of pharmacognosy and traditional medicine (P.C.G) project. That is extraction. The extracts can pass through other development stages such as altering molecular geometries and functional groups. This is after the extracts have been analysed for the nature of active metabolite present. The choice of method depends on several factors such as the extracting solvent use, the nature of the extract and the nature of the wanted compound. The supervisor will specify this complicated process for the student.

A compound or groups of compounds from the main extract are isolated. Sometimes, a division of the isolate into their enantiomers and the activity of each is tested. The extract is Characterize using computation method. Characterization includes melting point, boiling point, etc. Further investigation using animals or microorganism in the laboratory of Pharmacology (P.C.L) and pharmaceutical microbiology (P.M.B) laboratory. The major reason for this is to confirm the compound in an extract responsible for the medicinal activities or action. It is believed that not all the metabolites in an extract are active.

It is not in all cases that herbal products are used. Sometimes, synthesis and characterization of compounds are very common. The synthesis depends on the compound in question. Sometimes, a variation of synthesis method from the standard method and the resulting compound characterize and evaluated for activities comparing it with a standard method. The new methods may aim to produce a better compound in a short time using cheap and little agents with high yield.

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In other cases, the synthesis is same but the product may be slightly different by either removing a functional group or adding one or more. This little alteration to a compound can improve on it medicinal activities. However, when it failed to improve on it or produce the worst result, discard the whole experiment process. That does not mean that the student has failed the project. The major thing how well the student was able to report it.

In PCL laboratory, the compound is evaluated using laboratory animals and record the effects on them. A disease induces the animal and the effect of the new compound verified.

The method is similar to that of PMB laboratory. The only difference is that the agent is used on microorganisms. The effect s noted and compared with previous works.

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