Courses scheduled

CHEM 498 – ADVANCED BIOANALYTICAL

This course presents the concepts, tools and common instrumental techniques employed in modern bioanalytical chemistry for the quantitative analysis of drugs, metabolites, toxins, environmental contaminants, biomarkers, proteins, biotherapeutics and/or DNA in biological samples. The main topics covered will include sample preparation; mass spectrometry; immunoassays; biosensors; microfluidics; bioanalytical method validation and discussion of emerging bioanalytical techniques and trends. The applications discussed will encompass toxicology, forensics, pharmacokinetics, metabolism, clinical chemistry, environmental analysis and biotechnology. Lectures and discussion-style tutorial.

CHEM 498 / 620 – MEDICINAL CHEMISTRY

This new course will provide an introduction to the small-molecule drug discovery process.  It will begin with a general overview, followed by focused subsections that flow from early target identification, hit discovery, lead optimization, pre-clinical considerations, up to clinical trials.  The course will focus primarily on the rational design and synthesis of drugs that employ multidisciplinary approaches to satisfy a multitude of specificity and safety requirements.  There will be a focus on organic synthesis within the special context of medicinal chemistry that illustrates the challenges involved in leveraging the opportunities presented by high throughput, parallel and/or combinatorial synthesis in light of physical limitations imposed by processing large numbers of compounds.  Case studies from the current literature will be used to highlight how new technologies and strategies have overcome some of those limitations and will be used to highlight recent innovations in the field. The course will also chart the evolution of powerful techniques from structural research (NMR, X-ray crystallography, and computational modeling) as fully integrated medicinal chemistry tools for modern drug-discovery using examples from the current literature to highlight key advances.  This course is intended for a general audience and should be of particular interest to those considering a career in the pharmaceutical industry.

CHEM 498 / 630 – MOLECULAR MODELLING

This course offers a hands-on introduction to the computer tools used to predict the structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence, and to get insight into its function. The student will learn modeling techniques such as sequence alignment, homology modeling, computer visualization, molecular dynamics, and molecular docking. Computer laboratory with pre-lab lectures.

CHEM 415 / 615 – ANALYTICAL SEPARATIONS

High performance liquid separations on an analytical (non-preparative) scale are surveyed.  Fundamental separation mechanisms and application of the techniques are discussed.  Emphasis is placed on capillary electrophoretic separations of biologically relevant analytes which include peptides, proteins and nucleic acids.

CHEM 471 / 677 – ENZYME KINETICS AND MECHANISM

This course covers the following topics:  steady state kinetics – why is this useful for studying enzyme mechanism and what conditions apply? The use of initial velocity studies and product and dead-end inhibition to establish a kinetic mechanism (order of substrate addition and product release), descriptions of different types of inhibitors (reversible and irreversibly binding) in drug design, isotope effect studies to determine rate-limiting steps of reaction, the importance of studying the effect of pH on enzyme reactions, the importance of co-factors and metals in enzyme reactions. The course also includes detailed mechanisms of selective enzyme.