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Erland P. Stevens |
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Medicinal Chemistry Exercises a report to the Associated Colleges of the South faculty and other interested persons Development of the medicinal chemistry exercises was partially funded with an Associated Colleges of the South-Mellon Technology Fellowship. The exercises themselves utilize Java applets, called Physlets, that have been written by Professors Wolfgang Christian and Mario Belloni of the Davidson College Physics Department. The Physlets primarily provide the graphical output in the exercises. Interaction between each exercise web page and the Java Physlet is accomplished with scripts written in JavaScript. Specific information on implementing Physlets in web pages with JavaScript may be found in Physlets: Teaching Physics with Interactive Curricular Material by Christian and Belloni (Prentice-Hall, 2001). The medicinal chemistry exercises provide a means for students to learn pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic principles in a convenient fashion. Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics consist of ideas and relationships that are best illustrated through graphs. Unfortunately, dynamic interaction with graphical information is difficult or impossible with textbooks alone. The med chem exercises are meant to allow a student to immediately see the graphical effect of changing an equation parameter. In most cases, multiple examples may be viewed at once for side-by-side comparisons. While the ideas presented in the exercises are often not overly challenging, they are frequently not intuitive. The med chem exercises will hopefully make the underlying ideas of medicinal chemistry more accessible. Feedback on the exercises was solicited from students who were enrolled in Medicinal Chemistry (CHE 309) during the fall semester of 2005. All comments received may be accessed here. Future applets will likely cover metabolite formation, iv infusion with a loading dose, multiple exponential distribution, dose-response plots with various types of inhibitors, Scatchard plots, and QSAR with multiple independent variables. Other ideas may be considered if they may be implemented effectively. |
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Science & Math at Davidson |