This course is designed to provide you with an understanding of how pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies discover new drugs. This course will focus on the discovery of small molecule drugs. (In other courses, you will learn about the discovery of biological drugs and vaccines). The course will follow the process of pharmaceutical drug discovery from selection of targets to discovery of a product candidate, and the characterization of that drug necessary for initiation of clinical trials. In the companion course (ALS-333), you will learn about the clinical development and commercialization of small molecule drugs, which importantly involves interactions with governmental agencies that regulate the commercialization of pharmaceutical products. In this course, you will learn the key steps that define how potential drugs are identified, optimized, and characterized in the preclinical setting and gain understanding of the key management challenges in the drug discovery process. The course will provide the terminology, timelines and practical examples for successfully understanding the challenges in progressing an idea for a drug from the earliest discovery stages through to clinical trials. Case studies from industry will be presented detailing companies and products that utilize state-of-the-art drug discovery technologies. This is a science course that freely intersperses business and regulatory issues into the lectures and assignments.
Mandatory for first-year MBS students Recommended for PPM students interested in the pharmaceutical industry ALS330 is required for ALS430
After completing this course, you should have: