Structure-based drug discovery (SBDD) is becoming an essential tool in assisting fast and cost-efficient lead discovery and optimization. The application of rational, structure-based drug design is proven to be more efficient than the traditional way of drug discovery since it aims to understand the molecular basis of a disease and utilizes the knowledge of the three-dimensional structure of the biological target in the process.

Computer-aided drug design uses computational approaches to discover, develop, and analyse drugs and similar biologically active molecules. The ligand-based computer-aided drug discovery (LB-CADD) approach involves the analysis of ligands known to interact with a target of interest. These methods use a set of reference structures collected from compounds known to interact with the target of interest and analyse their 2D or 3D structures. The basic objective of these methods is to predict the nature and strength of binding of given molecule a target. Ab initio quantum chemistry methods, or density functional theory, are frequently used to deliver optimized parameters for the molecular mechanics calculations to predict the conformation of the small molecule and to model conformational changes in the biological target that may occur when the small molecule binds to it. The data also provide an estimate of the electronic properties (electrostatic potential, polarizability, etc.) of the drug candidate that will influence binding affinity.

Anti-Cancer Agents in Medicinal Chemistry aims to cover all the latest and outstanding developments in medicinal chemistry and rational drug design for the discovery of anti-cancer agents.

Treatments for Alzheimer's disease (AD) are needed due to the growing number of individuals with preclinical, prodromal, and dementia forms of AD. Drug development for AD therapies can be examined by inspecting the drug. There is 112 agents in the current AD treatment pipeline. There are 26 agents in 35 trials in phase III, 63 agents in 75 trials in phase II, and 23 agents in 25 trials in phase I. Development pipeline as represented on clinical trials.

Neurodegenerative disease is an umbrella term for a range of conditions which primarily affect the neurons in the human brain.

Neurons are the building blocks of the nervous system which includes the brain and spinal cord. Neurons normally don’t reproduce or replace themselves, so when they become damaged or die they cannot be replaced by the body. Examples of neurodegenerative diseases include Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Huntington’s disease.

Neurodegenerative diseases are incurable and debilitating conditions that result in progressive degeneration and / or death of nerve cells. This causes problems with movement (called ataxias), or mental functioning (called dementias).

Traditional medicine (TM) is due a revival. For millennia, people around the world have healed the sick with herbal or animal-derived remedies, handed down through generations.

In Africa and Asia, 80 per cent of the population still uses traditional remedies rather than modern medicine for primary healthcare.

Cancer is defined as an uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells. Current treatment strategies for cancer include combination of radiation, chemotherapy and surgery. The long-term use of conventional drug delivery systems for cancer chemotherapy leads to fatal damage of normal proliferate cells and this is particularly used for the management of solid tumours, where almost tumour cells are not invaded quickly. A targeted drug delivery system (TDDS) is a system, which releases the drug at a preselected bio site in a controlled manner. Nanotechnology based delivery systems are making a significant impact on cancer treatment and the polymers play key role in the development of nanopraticlulate carriers for cancer therapy. Some important technological advantages of nanotherapeutic drug delivery systems (NDDS) include prolonged half-life, improved bio-distribution, increased circulation time of the drug, controlled and sustained release of the drug, versatility of route of administration, increased intercellular concentration of drug and many more.

Vaccine is a material that induces an immunologically mediated resistance to a disease but not necessarily an infection. Vaccines are generally composed of killed or attenuated organisms or subunits of organisms or DNA encoding antigenic proteins of pathogens. Sub unit vaccines though exceptionally selective and specific in reacting with antibodies often fail to show such reactions in circumstances such as shifts in epitopic identification center of antibody and are poorly immunogenic. Vaccine delivery systems (e.g., emulsions, micro particles, immune-stimulating complexes ISCOMs, liposomes).

An emerging infectious disease (EID) is an infectious disease whose incidence has increased in the past 20 years and could increase in the near future. Emerging infections account for at least 12% of all human pathogens. EIDs are caused by newly identified species or strains (e.g. Severe acute respiratory syndrome, HIV/AIDS) that may have evolved from a known infection (e.g. influenza) or spread to a new population (e.g. West Nile fever) or to an area undergoing ecologic transformation (e.g. Lyme disease), or be re-emerging infections, like drug resistant tuberculosis. Of growing concern are adverse synergistic interactions between emerging diseases and other infectious and non-infectious conditions leading to the development of novel syndemics.

Antibiotics, also known as antibacterial, are medications that destroy or slow down the growth of bacteria. They include a range of powerful drugs and are used to treat diseases caused by bacteria. Antibiotics cannot treat viral infections, such as cold, flu, and most coughs.

The study of drug metabolism is called pharmacokinetics. The metabolism of pharmaceutical drugs is an important aspect of pharmacology and medicine. Drug metabolism is divided into three phases. In phase I, enzymes such as cytochrome P450 oxidases introduce reactive or polar groups into xenobiotic. The action of drugs on the human body is called pharmacodynamics, and what the body does with the drug is called pharmacokinetics. The drugs that enter the human tend to stimulate certain receptors, ion channels, act on enzymes or transporter proteins. As a result, they cause the human body to react in a specific way.

The molecular revolution in biology and medicine has already had an enormous effect upon the drug discovery process and seems destined to have a similar impact upon development.

Between the mid-1960s and mid-80s the world pharmaceutical industry’s capacity to innovate was beginning to be limited by the number of clearly identified biological targets. In consequence many companies worked on the same targets and, not surprisingly, they often produced very similar drugs.

Nutraceuticals are products, which other than nutrition are also used as medicine. A nutraceutical product may be defined as a substance, which has physiological benefit or provides protection against chronic disease. Pharmaceuticals are a product of scientific research that supports their claims for health improvement. Nutraceuticals are limited by the FDA as to what can and cannot appear in marketing for the product and specifically what must and must not appear on the label. Nutraceuticals, in contrast to pharmaceuticals, are substances, which usually have not patent protection. Both pharmaceutical and nutraceutical compounds might be used to cure or prevent diseases, but only pharmaceutical compounds have governmental sanction.

Personalized medicine, precision medicine, or theranostics is a medical model that separates people into different groups—with medical decisions, practices, interventions and/or products being tailored to the individual patient based on their predicted response or risk of disease.

Most microbiologists distinguish two groups of antimicrobial agents used in the treatment of infectious disease: antibiotics, which are natural substances produced by certain groups of microorganisms, and chemotherapeutic agents, which are chemically synthesized.

Pharmacology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of drug or medication action, where a drug can be broadly defined as any man-made, natural, or endogenous (from within the body) molecule which exerts a biochemical or physiological effect on the cell, tissue, organ, or organism (sometimes the word pharmacon is used as a term to encompass these endogenous and exogenousbioactive species). More specifically, it is the study of the interactions that occur between a living organism and chemicals that affect normal or abnormal biochemical function. If substances have medicinal properties, they are considered pharmaceuticals.

Drugs are a way of modifying the chemistry of the body. They can be used to treat diseases and infections, correct imbalances in electrolytes and fluids, or alter mental status (such as inducing amnesia or stopping hallucinations). Drugs are used both for medical purposes and for recreation. In both cases, no drug is perfect. A perfect drug would be 100% effective while causing no side effects. Drugs offer many benefits, but there are always trade-offs and risks to consider.

Aurora kinases control multiple events during cell cycle progression and are essential for mitotic and meiotic bipolar spindle assembly and function. There are three aurora kinases in mammals, some of which have oncogenic properties and all of which are overexpressed in multiple cancers 2.The kinetics of drug binding to gpcrs are complex and depend on several factors, including charge distribution on the receptor surface, ligand–receptor interactions in the binding channel and the binding site, or solvation. Previously, drugs were developed focusing on target affinity and selectivity. One third of all drugs on the American market act on the same kind of important cell receptor -- the G protein-coupled receptors. A major mapping of these drugs has found that their pharmacological mechanisms are becoming more complex. The mapping also reveals rapid developments especially within Alzheimer's disease, obesity, asthma and diabetes.

These routes are of interest for local delivery, as in asthma, but also for rapid delivery of drugs to the system circulation and direct delivery to the central nervous system. Devices that account for specific anatomical and physiological features of the intranasal and pulmonary routes will be featured. Drug delivery devices are specialized tools for the delivery of a drug or therapeutic agent via a specific route of administration. Such devices are used as part of one or more medical treatments.

Targeted drug delivery is an advanced method of delivering drugs to the patients in such a targeted sequences that increases the concentration of delivered drug to the targeted body part of interest only (organs/tissues/ cells) which in turn improves efficacy of treatment by reducing side effects of drug administration. Basically, targeted drug delivery is to assist the drug molecule to reach preferably to the desired site.

Medical toxicologists are involved in the comprehensive high level care of people and patients who come into contact with drugs, substances or other agents that pose a threat to their well being. The following is a brief list of some of these encounters.

Immunochemistry is a branch of chemistry that involves the study of the molecular mechanisms underlying the function of the immune system, especially the nature of antibodies, antigens and their interactions.

Pharmaceutical chemistry is the study of drugs, and it involves drug development. This includes drug discovery, delivery, absorption, metabolism, and more. There are elements of biomedical analysis, pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics. Pharmaceutical chemistry work is usually done in a lab setting.

The study of chemical processes within living systems is an interdisciplinary enterprise that spans the fields of chemistry, molecular and cellular biology, biophysics, and engineering. Chemical biology and biochemistry use chemical insight, techniques, and tools to study or manipulate biological systems. They are the cornerstones of medical technology and therapeutics.

Most chemical reactions in industry and biology are catalytic and play a role at some stage of the processing of about 80% of the goods manufactured in the U.S., yet catalysis is a neglected subject in chemical education. This book integrates the fragmentary treatment accorded the topic until now. It covers, in a unified way, catalysis in solutions, by enzymes, in synthetic polymers within the molecular scale cages of zeolites and other molecular sieves, and on surfaces of inorganic solids. The central ideas are chemical; and principles are illustrated by emphasizing industrial reactions and catalysts.

Design of a novel drug is one of the biggest challenges faced by the pharmaceutical industry. The use of computers accelerate the process of drug design which is a time intensive process, and also reduces the cost of whole process. Computational methods are used in various forms of drug discovery like QSAR, virtual screening and structure-based drug designing methods. Among these, structure based drug design is gaining importance due to rapid growth in structural data (available in RCSB & Nucleic acid Data Bank). This structural data can be used in molecular modeling to design lead molecules based on the structural features of the active site.

Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline of chemistry that studies the structure, properties and reactions of organic compounds, which contain carbonin covalent bonding. Study of structure determines their chemical composition and formula. Study of properties includes physical and chemical properties, and evaluation of chemical reactivity to understand their behavior. The study of organic reactions includes the chemical synthesis of natural products, drugs, and polymers, and study of individual organic molecules in the laboratory and via theoretical (in silico) study.

The range of chemicals studied in organic chemistry includes hydrocarbons (compounds containing only carbon and hydrogen) as well as compounds based on carbon, but also containing other elements, especially oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus (included in many biochemicals) and the halogens. Organometallic chemistry is the study of compounds containing carbon–metal bonds.

Nanochemistry is the combination of chemistry and nanoscience. Nanochemistry is associated with synthesis of building blocks which are dependent on size, surface, shape and defect properties. Nanochemistry is being used in chemical, materials and physical, science as well as engineering, biological and medical applications. Nanochemistry and other nanoscience fields have the same core concepts but the usages of those concepts are different.

Forensic chemistry is the application of chemistry and its subfield, forensic toxicology, in a legal setting. A forensic chemist can assist in the identification of unknown materials found at a crime scene. Specialists in this field have a wide array of methods and instruments to help identify unknown substances. These include high-performance liquid chromatography, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, atomic absorption spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and thin layer chromatography. The range of different methods is important due to the destructive nature of some instruments and the number of possible unknown substances that can be found at a scene. Forensic chemists prefer using nondestructive methods first, to preserve evidence and to determine which destructive methods will produce the best results.

Plasma Chemistry and Plasma Processing is an international journal that provides a forum for the publication of original papers on fundamental research and new developments in plasma chemistry and plasma processing. The journal encompasses all types of industrial processing plasmas, ranging from nonthermal plasmas to thermal plasmas, and publishes fundamental plasma studies as well as studies of specific plasma applications. Application contexts of interest include plasma etching in microelectronics and other fields, deposition of thin films and coatings, powder synthesis, environmental processing, lighting, surface modification and others. Includes studies of chemical kinetics in plasmas, and the interactions of plasmas with surfaces.

Analytical chemistry studies and uses instruments and methods used to separate, identify, and quantify matter. In practice, separation, identification or quantification may constitute the entireanalysis or be combined with another method. Separation isolates analytes.