Medicinal Chemistry

Medicinal Chemistry is an interdisciplinary area incorporating synthetic organic chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology, molecular biology and pharmaceutical chemistry in the search for better drugs.

The effective treatment of patients with diseases such as AIDS and cancer depends, to a great extent, on the ability of medicinal chemists to discover new drugs. Immune suppressing medications available today have made possible surgical procedures such as heart transplants that were unthinkable in a previous generation. Medicinal chemists have the opportunity to not only advance the frontier of science but also to see their work directly contribute to alleviating many of the diseases afflicting mankind.