Pharmaceutics involves the development and research of drug dosage forms.

The study of pharmaceutics is a unique one in the field of pharmacy.  Pharmaceuticists are able to manipulate a drug’s absorption characteristics by altering the salt form, changing the form in which a drug is administered, or devising a system in which to administer the drug to enhance its:

• onset of action,
• degree of effectiveness,
• or the reduction of side effects.

Concepts: We still relate the macroscopic effect of a drug to its atomic and molecular structure.  But the tools are sophisticated. We have developed models of effects like onset, effectiveness and side reactions so that only as a last step do we introduce drugs to human subjects - and now we know enough about atomic and molecular structure and its relationship to drug activity that we often use structure to predict activity.

Pharmacokinetics is a field of study within pharmaceutics, and is involved in tracing and predicting a drug’s movement through its course through the body to the point of elimination. Predictions are made using mathematical derivations.

The field of pharmacy and drug research is growing exponentially. Scientists involved in pharmaceutical research are specialized chemists, and drugs are a unique subset of chemicals. But drugs obey the basic laws of chemistry, have predictable behavior based on chemical principles such as solution properties, acid-base properties and chemical kinetics.

Hopefully by using a pharmaceutical example, these chemical principles will be illustrated in a manner that comes to life.

Drug development is a very long and sometimes tedious process. Like the discovery of barbiturates, often drug discovery involves a little luck or serendipity. Seldom these days are successful drugs discovered without years of  work by many scientists. Thousands of compounds are synthesized to discover one therapeutically active compound. And that one compound may be too toxic to go further in the process.

Medicinal chemists and pharmacologists work together to synthesize and test thousands of chemical entities to determine the effectiveness of the compounds. Like the barbiturate example, a chemist may modify a compound by changing a side-chain here, a methyl group there, yielding alterations in either the toxicity or therapeutic effectiveness of a substance. This seemingly simple modification yields a completely new compound, and tests must begin anew. The one compound that comes out of these tens of thousands may then lead to the developers’ application for an Investigational New Drug with the Food and Drug Administration.

During this phase of drug development, one of the characteristics that the chemists will examine is the ionization dissociation constant, or pK_a. The pK_a of the compound will give clues on how to proceed with many other aspects of drug research.

Dear Students, If all of this sounds intriguing, please consider that many opportunities in the pharmaceutical field exist today, and with aging population, these opportunities will most likely increase. Many colleges of pharmacy across the country have graduate programs in pharmaceutics, while some medical school programs offer opportunities in pharmacology. Medicinal chemistry is offered through both colleges of pharmacy and through some chemistry programs. Graduates with degrees in chemistry, biology, biochemistry may be well-suited to consider these options. Despite what you might think, it is not necessary to have a pharmacy background to pursue a graduate degree in these pharmaceutical fields. In fact, few of the graduate students enrolled today are practicing pharmacists! For more information, please see http://gradschools.com/listings/menus/pharm_sci_menu.html We are particularly proud of the work we carry out here at the University of Georgia! Sally Boudinot

Because of the importance of acid-base chemistry, ionization, and drug solubility in the pharmaceutical field, we hope that this module will provide a clear illustration of  acid-base chemistry.