The course is carried out through classroom lectures with slide projection and practical activities in the laboratory. It aims to provide knowledge about:
• chemical principles governing the action of drugs and prodrugs and their application to the design and development step;
• molecular design methodologies.
In detail, the course begins with a brief discussion of preliminary issues such as the problem of molecular complexity, the identification of pharmacophores elements, synthetic accessibility and the main methods used in molecular design. It proceeds with an analysis of the correlations between chemical properties and biopharmacologic properties. Then, it proceeds with the discussion of "drug-likeness" concept, with particular analysis of the ADMET parameters, rules Lipinski / Veber and subsequent variants, and the pharmacophoric points rule. Later, the course is focused in the analysis of the different strategies to improve the selectivity of action of the designed molecules. Finally, the course is focused on the study of the main computational drug design approaches. The following themes are addressed: graphical display of biological target and organic molecules, molecular mechanics and conformational analysis, molecular dynamics simulations, development of pharmacophoric models, docking studies, homology modeling techniques and QSAR studies. The course allows students to acquire the practical knowledge necessary to deal with the pharmaceutical research and understand the latest addresses, objectives and guidelines of this discipline.