Course overview
This course offers a comprehensive understanding of the drug discovery process, including historical, current, and emerging trends. It aims to develop skills in designing discovery strategies, lead optimisation and preclinical development programs.
- Foundations of drug discovery: Including classical strategies, serendipitous discovery, and evolving perspectives in the field.
- Role of traditional medicine: Leveraging traditional knowledge in the development of new pharmaceutical agents.
- Target identification and validation: Using biomedical science to validate drug targets.
- Modern approaches: Computational data mining, rational drug design and, structure-activity relationships; compound selection strategies; combinatorial chemistry; natural products and product extracts as chemical starting points.
- Assay Technologies: Radioactive, colorimetric, luminescent, fluorescent, and label-free methods for compound profiling; biotechnology and gene manipulation for biochemical and cell-based assay development.
- Preclinical evaluation: Methods for the study of drug absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME); principles of toxicology and safety evaluation; strategies for predicting failure risks and maximising success rates.
- Animal studies: The role of animal models in drug discovery, along with real-world case studies highlighting both successes and failures.
Course learning outcomes
- Demonstrate an understanding of the drug discovery process and the relative advantages and disadvantages of the various approaches to drug discovery
- Provide an overview of a successful drug discovery project and the outcomes associated with the specific approach used
- Provide an overview of the challenges facing a drug discovery program, including the needs to compromise between activity and other features of the drug (eg oral absorption)
- Identify simple strategies that a pharmaceutical company may implement to ensure that its drug discovery program is sustainable
- Evaluate a range of prospective approaches that a company may take in identifying a new lead compound for treating a specific human disease
- Demonstrate skills in group work and oral presentations
Availability
Class details
Adelaide City Campus West
Group 1
Class number 54599
Section LE01
Size 50
Available 30
Class number 54600
Section TU01
Size 30
Available 22
Class number 54601
Section TU02
Size 30
Available 18
Class number 54602
Section WS01
Size 50
Available 30
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