Fundamentals of Drug Discovery & Design

This course introduces the principles and methods of modern drug discovery and design. You will learn how drug targets are identified and validated, how hits and leads are discovered through screening, and how medicinal chemistry and structure-activity relationships (SAR) guide optimisation. The course covers structure-based and ligand-based drug design, pharmacophore modelling, molecular docking, virtual screening, ADMET and toxicity prediction, and an overview of preclinical and clinical development. Basic biology and chemistry are helpful; prior programming experience is not required.