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Pharmaceutical chemistry:
- Pharmaceutical chemistry is the chemistry of drugs that utilizes the ordinary laws of chemistry to study drugs.
- Pharmaceutical chemistry deals with the synthesis of drugs and the study of chemical composition, nature, behaviour, structure and influence of the drug in an organism, condition of their storage and the therapeutic uses of the drugs.
- Drug discovery is the heart of pharmaceutical chemistry.
Pharmaceutical chemistry
Drugs:
Drugs are chemicals used to treat diseases, even though we use many chemicals in our daily lives. The name "drug" comes from the French term "droque," which means "dry herb."
Various forms of drugs
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines a drug as "a substance or product used or intended to be used to modify or investigate physiological systems or pathological states for the benefit of the recipient."
Properties of drugs:
A drug should have the following features:
- First, it should not be toxic.
- It should not cause any side effects.
- It should not affect the receptor's tissues.
- It should not affect normal physiological activities.
- It must be effective in its action.
Sources of drugs:
The primary sources of drugs are animals and plants. Modern companies adopt many chemical tactics to produce medicines for specific treatments which are more uniform than natural materials.
Various forms of drugs
The following table shows various sources of drugs.
Source | Drugs |
| Plants | Morphine, Quinine |
| Chemical synthesis | Aspirin, Paracetamol |
| Animal | Insulin, Heparin |
| Minerals | Liquid Paraffin |
| Microorganism | Penicillin |
| Genetic engineering | Human Growth Hormone |
Types of drugs:
Drugs are classified into two types:
- The drugs that are used to treat and cure a specific disease.
- The drugs significantly impact the animal organism but have no therapeutic effect on a specific disease. This class contains Morphine, Cocaine, etc.
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