The Importance Of Medicinal Chemistry In Creating A Bright Future For Human Health

Medicinal chemistry is the foundation of all processes put in place to develop new drugs for therapeutic use, and the term is also used to describe studies carried out on existing drugs. It is a broad term which brings together the practices of biochemistry, pharmacology, molecular biology and statistics, amongst other disciplines it is also sometimes called pharmaceutical chemistry.

We all rely heavily on advances in the field of medicine and in the drug development process to stay healthy, even if we dont realise to what extent this is true. Without advanced medicinal chemistry we would not be privy to treatments for serious diseases or viruses and modern medicine would not be as advanced as it currently is. Breakthroughs in medicine are being made all the time, in treatments for certain types of cancer, diabetes, and other potentially serious illnesses and this is down to the study of medicinal chemistry and the painstaking drug development process.

By its very nature, medicinal chemistry and drug discovery require input from many different disciplines and it is the input from such a combination of experts that allows the industry to thrive and continue to make life-saving discoveries. The discipline of medicinal chemistry allows for the creation of a bright future for human health and a world in which we can be confident in the care system and know that research is being carried out all the time to develop drugs to treat common and rare illnesses alike.

The drugs that we buy over the counter or are treated with in hospital are developed using medicinal agents that naturally occur in plants, using synthetic drug compounds, or using a combination of the two. Once a drug has been developed, it goes through vigorous testing and clinical trials before being released onto the market or sent back to the laboratory for further development. This process ensures that those drugs that are released for general use are completely safe, and that those doctors and nurses who will be administering them, know exactly how to do so and what the potential side effects or complications are.

Without medicinal chemistry and the drug development process, the future of human health may not look quite as bright as it currently does. The H1N1 virus (swine flu) is a good example of how drug discovery and development helped to create a vaccine and minimise the spread of a virulent virus that was potentially fatal to those with underlying health problems. Without such processes, we would not be able to place such confidence in western medicine and the future of human health would not look nearly as bright.