Cheminformatics and medicinal chemistry
What you'll learn
- Units to describe biological activity
- An overview of drug discovery
- An introduction to cheminformatics
- The SMILES representation of chemical structures
- Small molecule databases
- Physical chemical features that may influence oral bioavailability of drugs
- Softwares to analyze physical chemical features of compounds
- Strategies to change the structure of bioactive compounds
Requirements
- Very basic knowledge of chemistry and biology
Description
Hi! In this course, I'm going to introduce some concepts and tools of Medicinal Chemistry and Cheminformatics!
Cheminformatics can be understood as an interdisciplinary field. It encompasses the theoretical knowledge of chemistry and the application of informatics. This area is applied in several fields, such as drug development, environmental science, and material science. In this course, we are going to focus on the part of cheminformatics applied to drug discovery. In this introductory course, you'll gain knowledge of chemical databases, drawing of molecular structures, and softwares to analyze physicochemical and structural features of molecules to predict their pharmacokinetic properties, bioactivity, or safety profile.
Medicinal chemistry, on the other hand, is an area where chemistry and pharmacology intersect, and it is directly involved in the process of rational drug development. Its main difference from the traditional drug discovery process is the emphasis on the chemical properties and structure of the chemical compounds investigated to generate possible insights into their biological activities. Medicinal chemistry, therefore, provides the rationale for choosing molecules, deducing their possible pharmacokinetic properties, such as plasma concentration, or biological activity, based on their functional groups, molecular weight, cLogP, etc.
You may like this course if you are interested in...
Understanding how molecules can be represented in a linear format file
Knowing how to use chemical databases
Knowing about physicochemical features that may help to predict oral availability of drug candidates
Using free softwares to analyze the structure of molecules to predict physicochemical features
Using free softwares to analyze the structure of molecules to predict biological activity
Knowing how proteins are relevant to the process of drug discovery
Contributing to the field of biochemistry and protein design by playing Foldit
Who this course is for:
- Students of biology
- Students of chemistry
- Students of pharmacy
- Students of biotechnology
- Professionals of the above areas
- Professionals or students of related areas
Instructor
English:
Hi, my name is Guilherme, I have a bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences, a master's degree in Experimental Biology, and a Ph.D. also in Experimental Biology, both from the Federal University of Rondônia (Brazil). My main research area is the search for compounds that are active against the parasites of malaria and leishmaniasis. I also have been programming for a while, especially in the programming languages Python and R. My main interests are biology, biotechnology, programming, medicinal chemistry, and artificial intelligence. My main goal here in Udemy is therefore spreading the knowledge related to these areas to people around the world.
Português:
Bacharel e licenciado em Ciências Biológicas pela Universidade Federal de Rondônia, mestre em Biologia Experimental pela Universidade Federal de Rondônia e doutor também em Biologia Experimental pela Universidade Federal de Rondônia. Desenvolveu seus trabalhos de iniciação científica e mestrado na busca de moléculas de plantas bioativas contra os parasitas da malária e leishmaniose, tendo trabalhado com fitoquímica e ensaios antiparasitários in vitro. No final do mestrado, começou a se interessar por bioinformática, química medicinal e programação, aplicando alguns programas de bioinformática e quimioinformática para auxiliar na descoberta de drogas antimaláricas. Possui experiência com as linguagens Python e R, e iniciou a programar em Javascript. Seu projeto de doutorado se constitui em avaliar um composto antimalárico já testado durante o mestrado de forma mais aprofundada contra o parasita da malária, realizando análises virtuais, como verificação de características físico-químicas e farmacocinéticas, docking molecular (interação virtual entre ligante e proteína-alvo do parasita) e ensaios em placas de cultura.