Pharmaceutical chemistry is the most evident of all of the pharmaceutical sciences in the day-to-day practice of pharmacy. Expertise in chemistry is an essential pre-requisite of the MPharm programme, and a thorough understanding of the fundamentals of chemical science very much underpins safe and effecttive clinical practice and the provision of information about drugs and medicines.



The Chemistry of Medicines module develops the understanding and application of pharmaceutical chemistry within three principal themes – organic chemistry, physical chemistry and analytical chemistry for the quantification of drugs in medicines. Organic chemistry is the largest and most indepth of these components and focuses on five key concepts – drug structure, polarity, stereochemistry, acidity-basicity and reactivity. Each of these concepts is fundamental to the clinical use of drugs and to the other pharmaceutical sciences, influencing formulation, ADME, drug-target interactions, metabolism, drug-drug interactions and ADRs. A series of keynote Chemistry of Medicines lectures highlights each concept in an appropriate pharmacy context, and this is built upon through inter-disciplinary integrated therapeutics sessions. Physical chemistry includes considerations such as the rates at which processes occur and the energies associated with those processes, which can impact on the stability and safe storage of medicines. Analytical chemistry incorporates fundamental skills and understanding, including reaction stoichiometry and the calculation and manipulation of amounts and concentrations. The isolation and quantification of drugs in dosage forms via a variety of methods and the interpretation and handling of data are emphasised. A more detailed description of the module content across the First and Second Terms is given in the module syllabus section below.

First Term

The first term topics are designed to reinforce and develop the understanding of fundamental chemistry concepts introduced in pre-university (e.g. ‘A’-level or equivalent) study. These include concepts such as moles and amounts of material, stoichiometry and molar concentrations, polarity, acid/base chemistry, solutions and their properties, bonding and molecular structure, stereochemistry, and the structures, properties and reactions of organic molecules. The emphasis here is very much on the application of fundamental chemistry concepts to the use of drugs and medicines in a clinically-relevant context.

Second Term

The second term content builds upon the understanding of the key concepts introduced in the first term, particularly the relationship between a drug’s structure and its physicochemical properties.

Techniques that can be applied to the isolation, separation, purification and quantification of pharmaceutical compounds are introduced, with an emphasis on the measurement of the amount or concentration of a drug in a formulated medicine or biological sample. Fundamental physical chemistry concepts are also discussed, introducing kinetics and thermodynamics and their relationship to the rates and energetics of chemical reactions and drug stability. This term will also include an introduction to the statistical analysis of data.