Section Medicinal Chemistry

The section Medicinal Chemistry (Pharmacochemistry) was founded on August 28th 1970 during a national symposium on "Rational Design of Bio-active Compounds".

Medicinal Chemistry (in dutch: 'Farmacochemie') is a multidisciplinary field which has as its main goal the rational development of novel drugs or other biologically active entities. In order to reach this goal Medicinal Chemists are dealing with (computational) design, organic synthesis, isolation, characterization and pharmacological/toxicological evaluation.  In particular the interpretation of biological activites at the molecular level as well as determination of structure-activity relationships (SAR) play a very important role.

In order to understand the action of drugs, research is also oriented at the structure and action of the proteins (receptors/enzymes) through which the drugs perform their action. Advanced computer-modelling techniques, X-ray crystallography and molecular biological techniques are used to study the drug-protein interactions in more detail.

Because of its highly multidisciplinary character the section of Medicinal Chemistry has pharmacologists, molecular biologists, analytic and organic chemists, computer experts, physicians and toxicologists as memeber besides medicinal chemists.