The Organic Chemistry of Drug Design and Drug Action

Standard medicinal chemistry courses and textbooks are organized by classes of drugs with an emphasis on descriptions of their biological and pharmacological effects. This textbook represents a novel and unique approach based on physical organic chemical principles and reaction mechanisms that rationalize drug action and allow the reader to extrapolate those core principles and mechanisms to many related classes of drug molecules. The Third Edition reflects significant changes in the drug industry and the process of drug design over the past decade. The Third Edition will preserve the successful approach of the current edition with significant changes in format and coverage to make the Third Edition even more appealing to users of the Second Edition as well as to users of competitive titles.

• Organic chemist's perspective of how drugs are discovered and designed.
• Focus on drug function at the molecular level.
• Use of clinically important drugs by commercial name and by generic name as examples.
• Inquiry methodology: text poses problems to the reader, some of which are solved, some of which require more analysis.
• Flexibility for use as a professional reference.