- The discovery, development and application of therapeutics includes disease biology, identification of novel molecular targets, molecular modeling, chemistry to synthesize and identify small molecule inhibitors, drug design and understanding metabolic pathways.
- The Therapeutics and Pharmacology Program trains students with an understanding of normal biology to apply the scientific method of hypothesis testing to research projects that include testing in preclinical laboratories and mouse models and validating preclinical efforts in the clinic — the classic “bench-to-bedside” approach. Focused research efforts complement general background courses such as the principles of medicinal chemistry, mechanisms of therapeutics, clinical applications of target-based therapeutics and disease prevention.
- Students also receive exposure to high-throughput screening and structure-based drug design, as well as to agents that target DNA and cell replication, and induce DNA damage and repair responses.