Medicinal Chemistry and Bioprocesses

The course of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Bioprocesses, included in the educational plan of the Pharmaceutical curriculum of the Degree Course in Biotechnology, aims to provide the student with:
a) the knowledge that underlies the design and development of new active ingredients having the required requisites to be able to become drug candidates.
b) the concepts necessary to understand the principles that regulate the fermentation processes in the production of drugs of natural or biotechnological origin.
Furthermore, through the description and in-depth analysis of some classes of drugs and all the steps required for setting up a process on an industrial scale, the course aims to provide students with the elements necessary to understand the critical issues that can be found in the entire process leading to the production and development of a drug.

Students will have to demonstrate that they have acquired and understood:
a) the basic concepts of pharmaceutical chemistry, the notions provided on the chemical, chemical-physical, structural properties and on the mechanism of action of drugs belonging to the main therapeutic classes, the fundamental elements of drug design and the role that the new biotechnological drugs have in research and development processes.
b) all the notions necessary for the preparation of a biotechnological process starting from the selection of the strain, to the study of the biosynthetic path, to the improvement of the stocks up to the development of the fermentation process and the recovery of the product.
Thanks to the notions provided in the lectures and the exercises carried out in the classroom, the students will be able to independently analyze the critical points of the process and will learn to hypothesize and design a fermentation process in its different phases, depending on the producer microorganism and the desired metabolite. Students must also be able to correctly understand the questions in the learning verification phase, to know how to choose, process and connect the knowledge acquired in both modules of the course.