Welcome to the Medicinal Chemistry MOOC!

We are delighted to have you join us on this journey into the fascinating world of drug design and medicinal chemistry. This course is designed to provide you with a solid foundation in structure–pharmacokinetics relationships, metabolism, and the chemical reactions that govern drug behavior, as well as strategies for optimizing hits into promising lead compounds.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this MOOC, you will acquire the basics of structure–pharmacokinetics relationships, metabolism, and related chemical reactions, along with the tools to perform structural hit optimization.

Skills You Will Gain:

• Explain key concepts and common terminology in medicinal chemistry, including lipophilicity, ionization, membrane permeation, metabolic intermediates, privileged structures, and hit-to-lead optimization.

• Apply your knowledge to solve exercises and problem-based questions related to medicinal chemistry and drug design.

Course Program:

• Structure–pharmacokinetic relationships: Learn about lipophilicity (logP) and methods to calculate it, ionization of chemical compounds, passive versus active membrane permeation, and crossing the blood–brain barrier, understanding the physicochemical properties that promote or hinder permeation.

• Metabolism and toxicophores: Explore Phase I and Phase II metabolism, the types of chemical reactions involved, their catalysts, and the role of metabolic intermediates.

• Strategies for structural modification in hit-to-lead optimization: Study privileged structures reported in the literature, and learn how to optimize them through substitution, molecular extension, bioisosteric replacement, incorporation of metabolic blocking groups, and vinylogue/benzologue strategies.

We hope you enjoy this course and feel inspired to explore the science behind how molecules become medicines. Let’s embark on this learning journey together!