The M.S. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry will provide advanced training to students interested in the pharmaceutical and health sciences. The program will train students in quantitative methods that are especially relevant to New Jersey’s high concentration of medical, pharmaceutical, environmental, and biotechnology industries.

The goal of the M.S. program is to prepare students for a successful career in the pharmaceutical industry with strong skills in modern chemical techniques, as well as an understanding of issues such as drug action, drug design, and drug development.

Students of the program will exhibit:

• Professionalism: Our students work on developing professional skills needed to succeed in the medical, pharmaceutical, environmental, and biotechnology industries.
• Academic Excellence: Our students work on sharpening their academic skills in the applied science and molecular-level basis of drug design.
• Commitment to Growth and Career Development: If you have a B.S. degree in the chemical or biological sciences or engineering and seek a career in the pharmaceutical industry, this program is for you.

Through their advanced coursework and research opportunities, we aim for our students of the Pharmaceutical Chemistry M.S. program to meet the following learning outcomes:

• Discuss newer methods for the stereoselective formation of carbon-carbon double bonds, with particular emphasis on the synthesis of natural products
• Determine which strategic bond constructions are most effective in obtaining synthetic targets with high selectivity
• Become adept at identifying strengths and weaknesses of particular methods, and determining which one are optimal for particular synthetic operations
• Become familiar with cellular digestion, absorption, and metabolism, including regulatory processes and pathology-induced interruptions
• Explain the basic elements of structure of amino acids, proteins, nucleic acids, carbohydrates and lipids
• Describe higher-order structure in proteins and relate it to function
• Demonstrate the role of the intermolecular forces in macromolecular structure and function
• Apply knowledge of chemical kinetics in understanding enzyme catalysis and mechanism
• Interpret kinetic data and identify types of enzyme inhibition
• Write and describe the key biosynthetic pathways in living systems
• Apply thermodynamic principles to understand energy production in biological systems
• Discuss electron transport and energy production
• Discuss biochemical processes: replication, transcription, and translation
• Explain biosynthesis of proteins
• Demonstrate an understanding of the role of medicinal chemistry plays in drug discovery, drug action, and pharmacy practice.
• Display an understanding of how drug metabolism controls the excretion, target concentration, dosing, and efficacy of drugs
• Understand how genetic polymorphisms and drug metabolizing genes, diet, and drug-drug interactions impact their metabolism
• Display an ability to link drug structure with mechanism of action, ADME properties, and therapeutic use of drugs acting on the eicosanoid, histaminergic, cholinergic, and adrenergic systems