What is a medicinal chemist?
A medicinal chemist is someone who applies the principles of chemistry to the development of pharmaceutical compounds to create new drugs for use in treatment. Medicinal chemistry is a chemistry industry that relies strongly on organic chemistry, but also includes the study of biology and medicine. Scientists in this area are working on top development of drugs, working on new compounds and classes of compounds that can provide the main breakthroughs in healthcare in the future. The medical chemist also deals with the development and possible production of drugs made from these compounds, thinking about problems such as drug supply systems, control of the quality of pharmaceutical compounds and potential drug interactions that could lead to harmful complications.
New pharmaceutical compounds are identified every day, although from the amount discovered each year, only a handful enters into the more advanced phases of development. The medicinal chemist works in the laboratory and processes the material to learn about the compounds it contains and developsTechniques for the synthesis of compounds that look promising. Medicinal chemists also spend a lot of time on computer and work with modeling programs that have been specially designed for use in medicinal chemistry to study the molecular structure of the compounds they work with.
Typical medicinal chemist has at least a master's degree in chemistry and may have done a doctorate. Career in medicinal chemistry is a good choice for people who like to explore unknown and categorize and for people with great patience and perseverance. Medicinal chemical compounds with rarely present themselves and a medicinal chemist can spend months or years of work on one project.
Medicinal chemists are mainly used by pharmaceutical companies in drug research. They can also work for government agencies conducting drug research and analysis of organic materials of pharmaceutical interest, and can work as a pedaGogs, train the next generation of medicinal chemists and conduct research in their laboratories. Like other people working on top science, a medicinal chemist usually belongs to a professional organization to keep up with progress in business publications and conferences with other medicinal chemists.