Incorporating Stories of Sedatives, Spoiled Sweet Clover Hay, and Plants from the Amazon Rainforest into a Pharmaceutical Chemistry Course To Engage Students and Introduce Drug Design Strategies

Abstract

This article describes three historical cases of drug discovery and how they were adapted as examples to teach chemical analysis to students pursuing a pharmacy (UK MPharm) and pharmaceutical sciences (BSc Pharmaceutical Sciences) degree. The selected cases were the synthesis of benzodiazepines and the discovery of warfarin and neuromuscular blocking agents. These examples present some peculiarities as they were developed in special circumstances and without the assistance of modern chemical analysis techniques. By incorporating these examples in a pharmaceutical chemistry class, the students became aware of the importance of chemical knowledge in overcoming technical limitations. Moreover, the examples were designed to stimulate the interest of the students in the subject. Three case studies including drug discovery examples were implemented in a chemistry module delivered to pharmacy students. The views of the students (48 MPharm and 7 BSc pharmaceutical sciences) about these lectures was obtained by using a questionnaire. After delivering the lectures, the majority of the students (64%) thought that understanding the history behind some scientific discoveries was important for them. Additionally, they considered that the selected historical examples were not only interesting but useful to understand the material delivered in the pharmaceutical chemistry module (75% of the students).

Exemplar Case Studies Demonstrating Why Future Pharmacists Need to Learn Medicinal and Analytical Chemistry

“…Students considered themselves to be more confident in medicinal chemistry following the workshop and had an increased interest in the subject area. This conclusion is well-aligned with previously published research that showed that delivery of chemistry content via case studies stimulated interest in the audience and improved the understanding of the covered topics . The case studies described in this article were unique, however, in that they required application of knowledge and understanding of drug chemistry, therapeutic effect, and analytical chemistry.…”

Implementation of Modeling Tools for Teaching Biorefinery (Focused on Bioethanol Production) in Biochemical Engineering Courses: Dynamic Modeling of Batch, Semi-Batch, and Continuous Well-Stirred Bioreactors

“…When designing the questionnaires, a number scale was used for the answers, where they scored a total of 9 items on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree-absolutely no) to 5 (strongly agree-absolutely yes). The questionnaire was adapted from questionnaires provided in their works by Al-Moameri et al [27], Larrañeta [28], and Zhu et al [29]. Results of this questionnaire let to identify some key areas of the modeling-simulation classes that could be improved.…”

Bis-4-hydroxycoumarin Synthesis: A Simple Laboratory Experiment for Undergraduate Students

“…19 Larranẽta reported a set of lectures describing a historical case of warfarin synthesis from sweet clover hay. 20 Our work in this respect is totally different as we synthesized various bis-4-hydroxycoumarins from a one-pot condensation reaction of 1 mmol of aldehydes and 2 mmol of 4-hydroxycoumarins. Although similar types of 4-hydroxycoumarin substituted products are available, to the best of our knowledge, no detailed work is present for undergraduate students in the field of multicomponent bis-4-hydroxycoumarin synthesis.…”

“…Vosburg and co-workers reported a methodology for undergraduate students for the synthesis of asymmetric warfarin . Larrañeta reported a set of lectures describing a historical case of warfarin synthesis from sweet clover hay . Our work in this respect is totally different as we synthesized various bis-4-hydroxycoumarins from a one-pot condensation reaction of 1 mmol of aldehydes and 2 mmol of 4-hydroxycoumarins.…”