Pharmaceutical chemistry, an amalgamation of basic chemistry and life sciences, is a multidisciplinary field that deals with the principles and applications natural, synthetic, computational and analytical chemistry in the discovery of chemical therapeutics for the prevention and cure of life threatening diseases. This is one of the major areas of drug discovery that caters the ever-increasing demand of new drug molecules for the effective medical practice against various diseases and disorders.

The pharmaceutical chemistry specialization of the department provides instructional and research training to the students in the areas of drug synthesis, characterization, drug testing etc.

Research Focus

The major areas of research being conducted under the pharmaceutical chemistry specialization include drug design, lead discovery and lead optimization from natural, semi-synthetic and synthetic sources, theoretical structural activity relationship studies, virtual docking and real time pharmacological evaluation of lead compounds against various drug targets, development and validation of analytical methods for drugs and drug formulations etc.

Following are the major diseases/disorders against which chemical agents are being designed and investigated:

• Diabetes
• Inflammatory diseases
• Cancer
• Epilepsy
• Depression
• Alzheimer's disease
• Parkinson's disease
• Infectious diseases
• Psoriasis

The strategies and tools employed in the lead discovery and optimization include:

• Structure-based drug design
• Ligand-based analog design
• Pharmacophore based drug design
• 2D and 3D QSAR
• Microwave assisted organic synthesis
• In vitro and in vivo pharmacological evaluation