Pharmaceutical chemistry

(chemical engineering) The chemistry of drugs and of medicinal and pharmaceutical products.

The chemistry of drugs and of medicinal and pharmaceutical products. The important aspects of pharmaceutical chemistry are as follows:

1. Isolation, purification, and characterization of medicinally active agents and materials from natural sources used in treatment of disease and in compounding prescriptions.

2. Synthesis of medicinal agents not known from natural sources, or the synthetic duplication, for reasons of economy, purity, or adequate supply, of substances first known from natural sources.

3. Semisynthesis of drugs, whereby natural substances are transformed by means of comparatively simple steps into products which possess more favorable therapeutic or pharmaceutical properties.

4. Determination of the derivative or form of a medicinal agent which exhibits optimum medicinal activity and at the same time lends itself to stable formulation and elegant dispensing.

5. Determination of incompatibilities, chemical and biological, between the various ingredients of a prescription.

6. Establishment of safe and practical standards, with respect to both dosage and quality, to assure uniform and therapeutically reliable forms for all medication.

7. Improvement and promotion of the use of chemical agents for prevention of illness, alleviation of pain, cure of disease, and search for new therapeutic agents, particularly where no satisfactory remedy now exists.