Pharmacy

ROBERTO DI SANTO

General Aims
The student will know the classes of the drugs described (hormones, drugs for nervous system, anti-histamines, local anesthetic, drugs for cardiovascoular system) with particular reference to their structures, the drug discovery process, structure-activity relationships, molecular modification leading to modification of duration of action and administration route, molecular mechanism of action, binding mode, metabolism. The student will also know examples of synthetic pathway for a few drugs described within the lectures, with particular attention to the cost of production of the drug.

Specific Aims
1. Knowledge and understanding (Dublin descriptor 1)
The students will know and will be able to understand all aspects about hormeones and hormonoids, drugs for man’s and woman’s health, drugs acting on autonomic nervous system (adrenergic and cholinergic), drugs for nervous system depressant (drugs for general anaesthesia, ansiolitic, hypnotic and sedative agents, anticonvulsant, anti-Parkinson, neuroleptic agents), narcotic and non-narcotic analgesics, stimulats agents (analeptics , antidepressant) local anaestetics, cardiovascular drugs (analeptics, antiarrhythmics, coronary dilatators, aardiotonic, antihypertensive, diuretic, hypolipidemic agents).

2. Applying knowledge and understanding (Dublin descriptor 2)
At the end of the course the student, applying the aquired knowledge, will be able to identify a drug placing it ina a specific therapeutic class, to evaluate the structural modification useful to improve (or decrease) the activity, modulate the absorption, and the lifetime. The student will be able to plan a synthesis of a specific drug, to apply his/her knowledge to hypotesize the binding mode of a specific drug with its receptor.

(Dublin descriptors 3,4,5 – soft skills)

3. Making judgements
At the end of the course the student will be able to evaluate the appropriate choise of a drug based on its structure. This critical and judgement ability, will be obtained thanks to continuous interactivity hold during the course. In fact the teacher will ask questions very frequently to stimulate students to link the actual topics to all the topics studied up to that time, so that the study will not be isolated, but integrated matter with the aquired knowledge. At the end of the course the stundent will hold a presentation about an innovative recent drug.

4. Communication skills
Judgment of the student study will be realized by oral exame about all the program topics, testing the communications ability of the student about the matter.

5. Learning skills
The student will find details of lessons on the suggested textbooks and in the scientific literature and will have ability to use them to pursue an indipendent preparation. This will be useful to teh studento to find again topics of the matter also in future time when the memory of the concepts described in the lesson room will be softer. The textbooks will remain the benchmark for student that will be able to find again details of forgotten notions.