Foreword

For a pharmacist to be a successful member of the health care team, a foundation of medicinal chemistry knowledge is one of the essential elements to developing an adequate knowledge base, and critical thinking and problem solving skills. This e-book provides the fundamental principles of medicinal chemistry including the functional groups occurring in medicinal agents, the acidity and basicity of drugs, and their water and lipid solubility as well as drug-receptor interactions. The physicochemical principles, isosterism and spatial characteristics of drugs are prerequisites to understanding drug pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics, biopharmaceutics, formulations and pharmacotherapeutics. Another important aspect crucial to comprehending the mechanism of drug action is the knowledge of important biosynthetic pathways frequently encountered in the pharmaceutical interventions. A comprehensive approach has been taken to explaining the phases of drug metabolism, modifications of drug chemical structures and their effects on drug pharmacokinetics, safety and efficacy.

These authors have carefully integrated the key aspect of Doctor of Pharmacy curriculum in the design and organization of the contents in this eBook series; its novel and innovative layout includes 4 volumes in three distinct areas - the fundamental concepts, detailed structure activity relationships of different drug classes, and recent developments in the area of medicinal chemistry and drug discovery. It offers students the opportunity to learn the principles of drug action in a logical stepwise manner. The case studies, student’s self-study guide and self-assessments at the end of each chapter are unique features of this book that would be beneficial to both students, faculty members and clinicians. Although there are several medicinal chemistry textbooks available in the market, to my understanding, this is the first textbook of its kind focusing on the integration of medicinal chemistry into the foundations for a pharmacy curriculum.

As a pharmacy educator and pharmaceutical scientist, I am pleased to testify and endorse this e-book to the pharmacy educators, and learners as a novel and innovative addition to the available literature. One of the key advantages of this e-book is that it focuses its approach on a student-friendly manner that incorporates the appropriate illustrative diagrams and study guides as well as self-assessments to enable students to enhance their skills as self-learners. The increasing emphasis on clinical and management focuses in our pharmacy curriculum makes it challenging for students with limited time available to learn and internalize concepts in the area of medicinal chemistry. This e-book series brings those memories of my early years as a pharmacy student and the evolution of the pharmacy education, and gives me the confidence that it will pave the way of future medicinal chemistry education for pharmacists and other health professionals.