Organic chemistry applied to biology

This course aims to provide the student with the foundation of organic synthesis and analytical chemistry, useful for the rational design, synthesis and characterization of small molecules endowed with biological activity, with particular relevance in the pharmaceutical sector.
The two main topics draw the student's attention to multi-disciplinary, chemistry-driven approaches to achieve a common goal - due to this, synthetic and analytical disciplines and techniques are often referred to in various contexts (for example, the use of NMR spectroscopy in the generation of molecular target models, and in the evaluation of target-ligand interactions).

After this course, the student will understand:
- the role of medicinal chemistry in drug discovery, including rational design and structural optimization of hits and leads (i.e., computational, chemical, biophysical sciences), and multiple examples related to their application to modern pharmaceutical research;
- how organic chemistry helps to identify new molecular targets through small molecule modulators of characterized (structure-based drug design, SBDD), or non- characterized molecular targets (ligand-based drug design, LBDD);
- the basics of NMR spectroscopy, including chemical shifts, integrals and coupling constants, the analysis of 1H and 13C 1D-NMR spectra and 2D-NMR techniques;
- applications of NMR to target-ligand interactions, including knowledge of various interaction techniques and their applications for the study of ligand-receptor interactions, and for the development of new biologically active molecules.