Why is medicinal chemistry important?

by

Jamie Francis

Put simply, medicinal chemistry also known as pharmaceutical chemistry is the discipline that keeps the future of drug discovery and development alive and kicking. Since the world began, man has found ways to keep himself safe, warm, nourished and well, and in modern history, the last of these has become the responsibility of scientists, laboratories, research organisations and pharmaceutical companies.

The drug development process is a lengthy and highly complex one; it can take several years for an idea, synthetic component or naturally occurring medicinal agent to become a drug that can be clinically trialled, rolled out across the country and administered by doctors, nurses and dentists to patients. In most cases the cost of developing a drug to treat a particular disease has to be weighed up alongside the beneficial effects it hopes to offer. Funding for research and the drug development process is therefore something that many high profile charities fundraise for and which pharmaceutical and healthcare companies have to budget for in their yearly targets.

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Cost aside, medicinal chemistry is vitally important to the treatment of diseases and without it, statistics on the recovery from certain serious illnesses and overall life expectancy could quite easily drop dramatically – it really is as important as that. Without medicinal chemistry, the discovery of new and more effective drugs would simply not happen at the rate it does now, and in many cases it wouldn t happen at all, and this is quite frankly a scary prospect for the human race.

Its importance is reflected in the sheer amount of research material and resources available online and the regular demand for this. For those heads of research, directors of chemistry, and others working in the drug development process, information gathered about particular components, new discoveries, and so on, these resources are an essential way to gather information that has already been scientifically verified, thus saving a great deal of repetition and expense.

For those people, the volume of online resources is essential in carrying out vital work and discovering new drugs to keep the human race healthy in as many cases as possible. These resources are available to all who need them and often form the backbone of a revolutionary medicinal discovery.

Find out more about the importance of

medicinal chemistry

and the

drug development process

online and get access to vital resources and publications to help you with your research.

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