Define field
Medicinal chemistry is a field in which organic knowledge and biology are combined, and a successful medicinal chemist must have sufficient knowledge in organic chemistry, biology, pharmacology, and pharmacokinetics, since the purpose of this specialized field is to design and manufacture new compounds. drugs as new pharmaceutical ingredients and optimizing the effects of existing pharmaceutical compounds (Drug-development) through improving their chemical structure or accompanying substances as well as determining the amount of chemical and pharmaceutical substances in different chemical and biological matrices using quantitative analysis methods Therefore, mastery of sciences such as organic chemistry, instrumental analysis (types of chromatography, polarography, atomic absorption, IR, NMR, and Mass), pharmacology, biochemistry, and biopharmacy is essential.
Based on the above information, a medicinal chemist can conduct research in the following research areas.
Designing potentially effective raw materials using existing software, this section is under Computational Chemistry.
Synthesis of raw materials designed to check the effect on a specific organism or disease and besides checking the correctness of the structure of the synthesized compounds using instrumental methods such as IR, NMR and Mass
Analysis of pharmaceutical or chemical substances in different chemical or biological matrices using device methods such as LC-MS and GC-MS, polarograph, atomic absorption, etc.
Finding suitable targets to overcome certain diseases by using biochemistry to design molecules that can inhibit or stimulate the said target.
History
The Department of Medicinal Chemistry of the Kerman Faculty of Pharmacy was established as one of the main departments of the faculty along with the departments of pharmaceutics, toxicology and pharmacognosy in 1987. This group started its activities in the field of education and research in the current form practically since 1374 and has been active in the field of synthesis of new medicinal compounds since the beginning of its establishment. The group's research activities are in various fields of medicinal chemistry, including organic chemistry, synthesis of organic compounds, analytical chemistry, analysis, identification of chemical compounds using various instrumental methods, and drug design with computational methods. At the beginning of the establishment of the group, the professors of Mashhad, Isfahan and Tabriz University of Medical Sciences and Faculty of Sciences of Bahonar University of Kerman were invited to cooperate in teaching. The first member of the academic staff of the medicinal chemistry department was the late Dr. Saeed Razi (instructor of analytical chemistry) and gradually Dr. Alireza Farumdi and Dr. Ali Asdipour joined the group. For several years, Mr. Dr. Kazem Saeedi (Ph.D. in organic chemistry and member of the academic staff of Bahnar University of Kerman) cooperated with the pharmaceutical chemistry department as an associate member of the group. Currently, the medicinal chemistry department has 6 main academic staff members [professor (1), assistant professor (5)] and 3 affiliated academic staff members [associate professor (2), assistant professor (1)].
Based on the vote issued in the 275th session of the Medical Sciences Universities Extension Council dated 08/12/2018, it was agreed to start the Discontinuous Master's degree course in Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the Faculty of Pharmacy in Kerman.