Maria Novella Romanelli and Claudiu Supuran

6 ECTS: 36 hours lectures and 24 hours laboratory training

Aims: The aim of the course  is to give to students  the basic principles of drug-target interaction and on the importance of physicochemical properties on drug activity. An overview of the drug discovery process will be presented, and computational modeling hand-on exercises will be performed.  The student is expected to become familiar with the chemical aspects of drug discovery.

Lectures: The fate of drug in the body. Physicochemical properties and drug design. Pharmacodynamics (drug-receptor and drug-enzyme interaction). The drug discovery process. Advanced methods for the production of biological drugs. Strategies for drug optimization.

Laboratory practice: Computational tool in drug discovery: structure-based and ligand-based methods. Case studies applied to modern drug development.