Course Description
Students will interpret the value of scientific information and literature while applying scientific methodology to address real-world health questions. General, natural scientific principles and contemporary issues explored within the course will include the following areas: chemistry, biochemistry, biology, cell biology, toxicology, statistics, pharmacokinetics, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and pharmacy.
Athena Title
Pills Potions and Drugs
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Healthcare is a major part of the everyday public life. However, most have little understanding about how the therapies they find in their medicine cabinet, or within the hospital walls, are discovered, translated into approved medications for wide scale consumption, and delivered to those in need. This course is designed to introduce students to the basic scientific concepts and policy that form the foundation of the various pharmaceutical-related fields necessary to provide these healthcare functions. To this end, the course starts with students exploring how diseases and related drug targets are prioritized for development by biopharma and academia and finishes with how these therapies are produced at scale and the role pharmacists play in delivering those medications to the patient. In between, students learn the general path these therapies must travel to be available to healthcare providers. Along the way, students learn and apply basic knowledge of natural sciences in qualitative and quantitative manner to diseases of human concern. Student Learning Outcomes 1. Understand the path of the therapeutic discovery along with the regulatory and patient care development steps necessary to bring a therapeutic to bedside. 2. Locate and evaluate reliable sources of scientific evidence in order to apply natural scientific principles to the development and delivery of medicines for diseases of critical societal concern. 3. Acquire the knowledge necessary to critically analyze basic drug dosage calculations and forms of therapeutic delivery in order to make straightforward patient care decisions. 4. Express and manipulate basic quantitative information, concepts, and thoughts related to toxicology and clinical trial data to determine if data is supportive of regulatory approvals. To optimally achieve these learning outcomes, the course is team- taught. The course will use the “Basic Principles of Drug Discovery and Development" 1st Edition by Benjamin Blass-” offered by the publisher Elsevier as the principal text for the course and be augmented with other primary and secondary scientific literature in order to provide an up-to-date prospective. Although the course will utilize largely a didactic lecture base, the course will employ several active student learning strategies to enable students to exercise their newly-obtained knowledge on real-world problems. This spirit will be included within the types of assessment performed during the course. In addition to completion of conventional examinations, evaluation will also occur by various means to include “hands-on” student and group projects, online activities, and partially peer-peer critiqued recorded student presentations. Students will also be required to shadow a pharmacy-related professional to understand how in-class material translates to real world settings. This course requirement is to provide the student with the upmost understanding of the day-to-day challenges that pharmacy professionals encounter and overcome, whether that is in research, the clinic, or other areas of pharmacy. This four-hour requirement will be performed with college of pharmacy faculty who will score it on a standardized student performance rubric.
Topical Outline
Overview of Modern Drug Discovery Methods Organizational Structures of Pharmaceutical Companies Current Landscape of the Drug Discovery Environment and Funding Academia (non-profit) and Biopharma Considerations for Drug Development Science Behind Different Types of Drug Targets Advantages and Origins of Biologics Scientific Techniques Used to Identify Biologics In-depth Examples of a Biological in Widespread Public Use Advantages and Origins of Small Molecules Scientific Techniques Used to Identify Small Molecule In-Depth Small Molecule Examples of an Everyday Medication to Treat Pain Drugs or Bunk: Origin of Supplements and Nutraceuticals Regulation of Dietary Supplements: Are They Safe and Effective? Smart Use of Dietary Supplements: Labeling and Health Claims Kinetics: Why Won’t my Drug Get Into the Body? Toxicology: Why Did my Good Drug Go So bad? Animal Testing: Who has more Rights, Animals, or Humans? Money: Why Does my Drug Cost so Much? Personalized Medicine: Why Doesn’t my Drug Work on You? Drug Delivery Basics: You Want to Put that Where? Drug Dosing Calculations Package Inserts: What’s the Deal with that Gibberish? Clinical Trials: We just Don’t Let you Take Anything Crunching the Numbers to Determining when Something Works, FDA Drug Approval Process GMP and Other Differences Between Manufacturing and Discovery How Science is Involved when Making Therapeutics at Scale Bringing Science to Patients: In a Hospital and the Community at Large Big Data, Large Populations: How Determining Health Trends Leads to Better Health Outcomes
Syllabus