Pharmaceutical Chemistry

Pharmaceutical chemistry is focused on the quality aspects of medicines and their fitness for safe therapeutic use. It combines the disciplines of chemistry and pharmacology for the development, manufacture and quality testing of drugs. It includes the identification and synthesis of potential new chemical entities and understanding their structure-activity relationships.

Pharmaceutical chemistry utilises analytical instrumentation for the characterisation and quality testing of a huge range of medicinal compounds. Analytical procedures include proof of structure and drug quality. Typical tests are for purity, manufacturing contamination, degradation, isomers (ie stereoisomer’s and enantiomers) and stability.

Medicines are overwhelmingly organic compounds including small organic molecules and biopolymers. They can be in the form of powders, tablets, aerosols from inhalers and a range of liquid forms such as emulsions. Most require chemical and physical analysis to validate their composition.

Examples of common chemical analysis are high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) and various types of spectroscopy including UV-Visible, FTIR, Circular Dichroism and Polarimetry. Particle size, and sometimes particle shape are important physical parameters for drugs delivered in the form of a powder. Likewise droplet size is important for drugs delivered in the form of an aerosol.

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