Drug Discovery: Treating Human Disease Through Medicine

• Program: Summer Pre-College Courses
• Course Code: CEBI0958
• How to Apply

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Course Description

Whether you’re pursuing a career in research or medicine, this class will provide you with a “behind the scenes” look into drug discovery and prescription medicines. You will learn biological pathways of the most prevalent diseases affecting society and what drugs were brought forth to treat these aliments. By course end, you will have developed a fundamental understanding of various disease states, their current drug regiments and how these treatments came into existence.

In particular, in this course, we will:

•Learn about the key diseases confronting society today
•Explore the drug design process from bench top to bedside
•Tour industrial and university laboratories to learn where and how medicines are invented
•Have hands-on demonstrations with implantable drug delivery devices and inert tissue samples
•Bring in leading experts from industry and academics to share their knowledge, experience, and perspectives
•Research controversial drug treatments and their associated toxicology vs. efficacy
•Highlight the path to achieving your professional aspirations

We will investigate biology in drug discovery from the vantage point of the pharmaceutical scientist, research biologist, and clinician. We will use simple frameworks to examine diseased pathways, physiology, pathologies and current treatments for major maladies such as Alzheimer’s, ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia and microbial infections. In addition to disease states, we will explore drug abuse biology and reproduction pharmacology.

The course will also cover the practical considerations of drug development, for example:

•Why does alcohol interact with prescription drugs?
•Why are you advised to take some drugs with food, while others restrict particular foods (such as grapefruit juice)?
•Why do medicines work for some patients and not for others?
•Why do some drugs come as tablets, some as gel-caps, and still others require injection?
•Why are some illnesses still “untreatable”?
•Why do drugs have side effects and are they predictable?

These and many more questions will be answered through learning the basic principles of pharmaceutical sciences.

There are no prerequisites for this course, but a background in high school biology and/or chemistry may be advantageous.

*Please note: This course has a Material Fee of $150.00.