Turning molecules into drugs: design, structure-activity relationships, delivery, and the toxicology that decides what survives.
8 topics · 8 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
Glossary of Terms Used in Medicinal Chemistry (IUPAC Recommendations 1998)
C. G. Wermuth et al. · 1998
Gives medicinal chemistry's working vocabulary precise definitions, including the pharmacophore as the minimal spatial arrangement of features a…
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Solid Phase Synthesis
R. Bruce Merrifield · 1984
Describes anchoring a growing peptide chain to an insoluble resin bead so that each coupling and washing step can be driven to completion and excess…
+2 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
Croonian Lecture: On Immunity with Special Reference to Cell Life
Paul Ehrlich · 1900
Introduces the side-chain theory of immunity and the idea that a drug acts by binding a specific cellular receptor, founding receptor-based…
+3 more at this level
8 works
C. G. Wermuth et al.
Gives medicinal chemistry's working vocabulary precise definitions, including the pharmacophore as the minimal spatial arrangement of features a molecule needs to bind its target.
link checked 17 Sept 2026R. Bruce Merrifield
Describes anchoring a growing peptide chain to an insoluble resin bead so that each coupling and washing step can be driven to completion and excess reagent simply filtered away.
link checked 17 Sept 2026James W. Black
Describes designing beta-blockers and H2-receptor antagonists by rational modification of a natural ligand's structure, rather than by screening large compound collections.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Jarkko Rautio et al.
Surveys how an inactive derivative of a drug can be designed to convert to the active compound only after absorption, improving properties such as solubility or tissue targeting.
Paul Ehrlich
Introduces the side-chain theory of immunity and the idea that a drug acts by binding a specific cellular receptor, founding receptor-based pharmacology.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Corwin Hansch & Toshio Fujita
Combines electronic and hydrophobicity substituent constants into a single linear equation that predicts a compound's biological potency from its structure, founding quantitative structure-activity relationships.
Bruce N. Ames, William E. Durston, Edith Yamasaki & Frank D. Lee
Argues that a bacterial mutagenicity assay, run with a liver-enzyme extract to mimic mammalian metabolism, can flag a chemical as a likely carcinogen far faster than an animal study.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Akira Suzuki
Shows that an organoboron compound and an organohalide couple cleanly under palladium catalysis, giving process chemists a mild, functional-group-tolerant route to biaryl bonds used throughout drug manufacturing.
link checked 17 Sept 2026