Drug Discovery

Course aim

To provide a comprehensive understanding of the drug discovery process including past, current and future trends in discovery and to develop skills in designing discovery, lead optimisation and preclinical development programs.

Course content

Overview of classical drug discovery, serendipitous discovery and the changing perspectives in drug discovery and development; role of traditional medicine knowledge in the development of new pharmaceutical agents; natural products and product extracts – creating a medicine from a plant; rational drug design and structure activity relationships, combinatorial chemistry and computational data mining; identification and validation of physiological targets for drug action and their role in drug discovery; biotechnology, gene manipulation, and drug discovery; methods for the preclinical evaluation of drug absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion; introduction to the biochemical and molecular basis of drug action; identifying surrogate clinical markers of drug action; principles of toxicology and preclinical evaluation of drug safety; predicting the factors that may lead to the failure of a new drug candidate and maximising the chance of success; animal studies in drug development; filing an investigational new drug application; case studies in drug discovery – success stories and failures; discovering new drugs from previous failures.

Textbook(s)

H.P. Rang 2006, Drug Discovery and Development: Technology in Transition, Churchill Livingstone (Elsevier)

Prerequisite(s)

Common to all relevant programs
Subject Area & Catalogue Number	Course Name
CHEM 1007	Chemistry 101
CHEM 1014	Chemistry in Life 101

Students choose one of the above courses for their pre-requisites.

Corequisite(s)

Nil

Teaching method

Component	Duration
INTERNAL, CITY EAST
Lecture	1 hour x 13 weeks
Workshop	2 hours x 13 weeks
Tutorial	1 hour x 13 weeks
Workshop (for IBPP students only)	2 x 2 hours x 8 weeks

Note: These components may or may not be scheduled in every study period. Please refer to the timetable for further details.

Assessment

Examination, Group Project and Presentation, Written test

Fees

EFTSL*: 0.125
Commonwealth Supported program (Band 8A)
To determine the fee for this course as part of a Commonwealth Supported program, go to:
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Fee-paying program for domestic and international students
International students and students undertaking this course as part of a postgraduate fee paying program must refer to the relevant program home page to determine the cost for undertaking this course.

Non-award enrolment
Non-award tuition fees are set by the university. To determine the cost of this course, go to:
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Not all courses are available on all of the above bases, and students must check to ensure that they are permitted to enrol in a particular course.

* Equivalent Full Time Study Load. Please note: all EFTSL values are published and calculated at ten decimal places. Values are displayed to three decimal places for ease of interpretation.