Drug Discovery
Behind all new drugs lies a good idea, a discovery, or a hypothesis. Drug Discovery deals with this early phase where scientists are hunting for new effective pharmaceutical substances.
The objective is to discover or synthesise new chemical or biological compounds and to map their therapeutic but also possible unwanted effects in animals and people.
In the discovery phase, work is often conducted in research groups that include experts in pharmacology and medicinal chemistry, among others.
Professional profiles
With Drug Discovery as a basis, you can continue in a professional position within drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry, or in a PhD programme at PharmaSchool.
The Drug Discovery track provides the opportunity for various professional profiles, such as:
Within pharmacology, you focus on the part of the discovery phase that involves biological/pharmacological topics such as identification and validation of new drug targets.
This work includes elucidating the mode of action of the drug substance, and investigating its effect on cloned receptors in test tubes, cell cultures, isolated organs and/or laboratory animals that mimic a specific human disease.
All of these efforts aim at predicting the therapeutic effect of novel compounds in humans.
Within medicinal chemistry, you focus on the part of the discovery phase, which involves chemical techniques such as design and synthesis of new chemical compounds.
The purpose is partly to identify potential drug substances and partly to optimise the pharmacological activity and selectivity of the compounds.
Work in this phase of drug discovery also involves improvement of the physicochemical properties of the compounds so that they will become potential drug substances with optimal characteristics.
Within biopharmaceuticals, you will gain knowledge on how biopharmaceuticals behave in vivo and how to handle major challenges regarding biostability, bioavailability, pharmacokinetics and toxicity.
Biopharmaceuticals deals with chemical modification and state of the art protein engineering.
The active ingredient in biopharmaceuticals is in general a biological macromolecule and imitation of endogenous compounds with high activity and specificity combined with low toxicity.
Macromolecules have distinct physical and physicochemical properties compared to small molecules. Hence, understanding the pharmaceutical development of biopharmaceuticals requires specific skills and a different way of thinking.