Doody's Review Service

Reviewer:	Rahmat Talukder, PhD, RPh (The University of Texas at Tyler)

Description
This handy reference book discusses the chemistry of medicinal agents at a level that facilitates pharmacy students' understanding of core principles. Similar to the previous version, this third edition maintains the breadth and depth of the major topics in medical chemistry with a few updates. The book has been revised and expanded to include new drugs and additional examples and explanations. Each chapter includes several practice problems, with answers provided in the appendix.

Purpose
The book intends to provide students with fundamental concepts in the chemistry of drugs. Medicinal chemistry focuses on the discovery, invention, design, and preparation of new chemical entities with expectations of their clinical use. It also elucidates the structure-activity relationship (SAR). In order to comprehend drug design and the molecular mechanisms involved in drug actions, future pharmacists need to integrate knowledge from different fields, such as chemistry, biochemistry, physiology, microbiology, and pharmacology. In medicinal chemistry, these disciplines overlap and help students relate the chemical nature of a drug to its pharmacological effects. Thus, the book has a worthwhile objective.

Audience
The book is written for undergraduate or pharmacy students required to take medicinal chemistry courses. Because of the frequent emergence of new pharmaceuticals, this third edition has evolved to include new drugs, which will draw the attention of the target audience and benefit anyone interested in pharmacy. Both authors are academicians with years of experience in the field.

Features
The book presents the content in 10 chapters. Each chapter begins with learning objectives and ends with review questions. The appendix provides answers to the chapter review questions, which will be helpful to students assessing their knowledge of the topic. The chapter on functional groups succinctly discusses their properties on drug molecules and how they affect overall therapeutic actions. One chapter explains how the acidity and basicity of drug substances can influence their physicochemical properties and therapeutic effects. Another chapter describes the mechanisms of drug binding to biological targets and how the presence of other functional groups can influence drug-target bond formation. The book also discusses the fundamentals of drug metabolism. A chapter on structure-activity relationships (SAR) and drug design briefly discusses the concepts of rational drug design. Readers will find the discussion on the molecular basis of drug adverse effects and drug interactions with other compounds informative. A separate chapter on prodrugs would be appropriate. The current trends in drug discovery predominantly include biologics, so a separate chapter on RNA, DNA, and proteins as drug targets would also be useful. The book mentions the commonly used drugs. In addition, a chapter on agents used in various disease states, such as cancer, infection, and cardiovascular disease, would be helpful.

Assessment
This book will be a useful resource for students taking medicinal chemistry or pharmaceutical chemistry courses. It discusses the basics of drug chemistry critical to understanding the mechanisms of drug action and the design and synthesis of new chemical entities. Several books on this subject exist in the marketplace. For example, *Foye's Principles of Medicinal Chemistry, 8th Edition, Roche et al. (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2019) is considered the gold standard in the field; graduate students, faculty, and industrial researchers are an appropriate audience for this text. Another title, Medicinal Chemistry: An Introduction*, 2nd Edition, Thomas (Wiley, 2008), includes more topics than this book, but the former is somewhat voluminous. Therefore, with the addition of a few chapters, the current book will be a must-have reference for undergraduate and pharmacy students.