Pharmacognosy and Toxicology Module (I semester):
The Pharmacognosy course will be aimed, in the general section, to acquaint the student with the factors able to modify the quality of the natural drugs from plant kingdom, as the proper collection, storage and marketing, likewise with their botanical/physical/chemical/ biological identification and quality control, in accordance with the officinal codices; the systematic section will deal with the monographic description, from the medicinal plant to the single active principle of the phytocomplex, of the properties of different classes of herbal entities providing secondary metabolites of pharmacological interest for galenic laboratories and pharmaceutical industries, in particular will be considered their action mechanism.
The Toxicology course will be articulated in three parts. The first one will provide knowledge on the basic principles of toxicology (e.g., toxicokinetics, toxicodynamics, and preclinical models to test chemicals) with particular attention paid to the classification of toxicological agents on the basis of methods commonly used in the clinical practice. The second part will be focused on cancerogenesis and teratogenesis. The third part will be dedicated to illustrate examples of clinically meaningful drug-drug interactions and of how the response to drugs and environmental chemicals varies with genotype (toxicogenetics).
Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy Module (II semester):
This course is aimed to give the appropriate knowledge of the pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic profiles as well as the adverse reactions of several drug classes and specific drugs reported in the program, in order to understand the rational bases of their use in therapy.