Chemistry

This laboratory course in general chemistry is taken in conjunction with the General Chemistry lecture course (CHEM 10). Students perform 16 laboratory experiments. Text: Experiments in General Chemistry. Published by NTU. Assessment: final exam.

The course teaches key concepts prevalent in organic chemistry and the resulting properties of organic molecules. These are presented based on standard U.S. text books and are complemented by specific examples of compounds present in important drug molecules and natural products. Introductory topics include molecular structure, chemical bonding, and orbital interactions. The resulting properties of molecules are then introduced on key compound classes such as alkanes, alkenes, and alkynes that later are complemented by aromatic rings and functional groups such as alcohols, carbonyls, and amines. Furthermore, the crucial properties that explain the reactivity of organic molecules and enable a detailed understanding through distinct reaction mechanisms are highlighted throughout the course. Finally, these concepts are applied towards the planned synthesis of target molecules in combination with suitable structure determination methods.

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.