Principles of Drug Discovery

Course Description

This introductory course provides a framework for understanding the process of drug discovery, from target selection and validation to lead optimization and preclinical studies. Although the fundamental principles of drug discovery are well established, the tools, technologies and methods used in the discovery and development of safe and effective drugs are constantly evolving. Personalized medicine and novel diagnostics involving biomarkers, pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics in clinical practice are changing the landscape of drug discovery. The instructor will address fundamental and translational principles and cutting-edge approaches along with strategies for integrating current scientific approaches into the drug discovery process.

Learning Outcomes

At the conclusion of the course, you should be able to

• Have a detailed understanding of the different aspects of drug discovery process as they are practiced in pharmaceutical industry
• Gain knowledge of the most recent tools and techniques used for discovering new drugs
• Better design experiments in the area of drug discovery

Topics Include

• Target identification and validation
• High throughput screening, hit identification, hit-to-lead and lead optimization
• Induced pluripotent stem cells in disease modeling and drug discovery
• Structure-activity relationship, in silico drug design and molecular modeling
• Pharmacokinetics (absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicology)
• Pharmacodynamics
• Toxicology
• Personalized medicine in drug discovery, including the OMICS technologies, biomarkers and single nucleotide polymorphism analysis in patient diagnosis, stratification and monitoring
• Gene Therapy and Tissue Regenerative Medicine. 

Additional Information

Completion of "Bioinformatics Tools, Databases and Methods or Experimental Methods in Molecular Biology" is recommended.