Medicines and the molecules that will interest us during this teaching journey are able to modulate biological processes, all of which are governed by chemical interactions between biomolecules. Responses to these interactions take place at various scales ranging from the molecule (e.g. conformational change) to the cell (e.g. cell death), the body (e.g. lower body temperature) or even the environment (e.g. new antibiotic resistance). These effects can be caused and influenced by small organic or inorganic molecules, peptides, proteins and antibodies interacting with biological macromolecules (e.g. membrane or intracellular receptor, enzyme, DNA...). This is the basis of the development of drugs and of any molecule that can modulate or correct a biological process. This course aims to teach how we can study and design drugs, and more generally any compound capable of interacting with the body.
This course is jointly offered by the Department of Biology and the Department of Chemistry. The aim of this course is not only to introduce students to the sciences of drugs, but also to deepen their knowledge of the different stages of drug discovery and development.
This course requires some knowledge in chemistry and biology, but not to be already a specialist in these fields. The following topics and key notions will be covered:
- Identification and validation of therapeutic targets
- Mechanism of action of drugs
- Ligand - receptor interactions, enzyme inhibitors
- Drug modalities: organic and inorganic small molecules, peptides, proteins, antibodies, gene and cell therapies, new modalities
- Target-based and phenotypic drug discovery
- Compound libraries and high-throughput screening
- Medicinal chemistry, synthetic strategies for drug conception
- Chemoinformatics, molecular docking and structure-activity relationships (SAR)
- Molecular and cellular pharmacology, animal models
- Efficacy, selectivity, safety, bioavailability and metabolism of drugs.
Language: English
- Teaching coordinator: Formstecher Etienne
- Teaching coordinator: Gasser Gilles
- Teaching coordinator: Nay Bastien