Chemistry

The course describes pharmaceutical products and production, with an emphasis on physicochemical and chemical engineering questions. It also describes what happens to the drug product in the living organism when administered through different routes. The course focuses on different pharmaceutical formulations such as solutions, suspensions, emulsions, granulates, tablets, capsules, aerosols, and creams. The course gives an overview of the quality aspects of the pharmaceutical industry, and special requirements on the pharmaceutical industry when it comes to demands from authorities both Swedish and international. The laboratory assignments illustrate important formulation aspects and how to evaluate the quality and physical-chemical properties of the formulation. 

The course covers chromatographic separation of small molecule organic compounds with special emphasize on the molecular mechanism and theory of analyte-column interactions for gas, supercritical fluid and liquid chromatography, and the theory of ionization, fragmentation, mass-to-charge separation, ion detection and data interpretation for all common mass spectrometers and ionization techniques. 

Innovative drug research has a drug discovery and a drug development phase. In the drug discovery phase, medicinal chemists make molecules and pharmacologists test these molecules. This course challenges students to think of a medical need, to find a target, to come up with a lead, and optimize this lead towards a drug candidate. While performing this structure-based drug design project, students learn about medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, organic chemistry, biochemistry, and some computational chemistry. Concepts of organic chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology, and medicinal chemistry that form the foundation of structure-based drug design are taught in a just-in-time fashion.

The course aims to build students' organic chemistry experimental skills and knowledge. The course outlines is as follows: Experiment 1: Melting point determination Experiment 2: Recrystallization Experiment 3: Distillation Experiment 6: Extraction Experiment 8: Chromatography (1) Experiment ten: alkenes and alkanes Experiment 12: Preparation and properties of chloroalkane Experiment Thirteen: Properties and Reactions of Alcohols Experiment Fourteen: Preparation of Ethers Experiment 16: Preparation of cyclohexanone Experiment Eighteen: Diels-Adel Reaction Experiment 20: Preparation of Aspirin and Its Properties

This course introduces students to our current understanding of life processes at the molecular level. It covers various topics related to the structure and function of proteins, nucleic acids as the storage molecules of genetic information, the dynamic nature of cell membranes, and generation of biological energy. This course provides the foundation for students to learn more advanced subjects such as neuroscience, gene therapy, development of new crops, drug discovery, and protein engineering.

There is an old saying, “You are what you eat”, which means the food one eats has a bearing on one’s state of mind and health. Since the discovery of fire, culinary practices have been instrumental in the progress of human evolution. Culinary practices may be regarded as one of the oldest and most widespread applications of chemistry and physical sciences in everyday life. Traditionally, understanding and knowledge on cooking are based on collective experiences of diverse individuals passed down from generations to generations. This course explores everyday life cooking and food preparation activities from scientific perspectives. It examines critically the “folk knowledge” of cooking from the viewpoints of chemical, biological, physical and social studies. This course promotes science literacy through exploring concepts and theories that are behind everyday cooking and cuisines. Using knowledge of cooking as a starting point, students explore the intimate relationship between sciences, personal life and society through daily life examples and laboratory demonstrations. All course contents including practical sections are designed to be suitable for students having little or no science training.