Undergraduate - UnitPSC3142 - Computational drug design

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2014 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 2, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered, or view unit timetables.

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Offered	Parkville Second semester 2014 (Day)
Coordinator(s)	Dr Elizabeth Yuriev

Synopsis

The unit will cover these important topics in the area of computational drug design

Structure-based drug design (SBDD): docking, conformational and orientational searching (posing) and scoring methods; applications of SBDD in virtual screening and de novo drug design
Molecular databases: Representations of molecular data, molecular and biological databases.
Molecular properties: Prediction of molecular properties, the concept of 'druglikeness', molecular similarity.
Computational lead optimisation: pharmacophores, molecular interaction fields, experimental design, compound selection, factorial design, Craig plots.
An introduction to bioinformatics: sequence alignments, sequence search algorithms and practical applications
Protein structure: protein homology and homology modelling

Outcomes

During the course of this unit, students will learn about a number of advanced computational technologies specifically implemented in the pharmaceutical sciences.

Students will be expected to:

Understand selected concepts and techniques underpinning computational drug design
Be able to apply knowledge of these techniques in predicting and evaluating drug-target interactions
Develop their ability to engage with the current literature and critically interpret research publications

Assessment

End of semester written exam - 60% (2 hr) ; Practical component and computational drug design assignment - 40%

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Elizabeth Yuriev

Workload requirements

Contact hours for on-campus students:

thirty 1-hour lectures
six 1-hour tutorials
six 4-hour practical laboratories

Prerequisites

PSC2142 Computational Chemistry

Additional information on this unit is available from the faculty at:

http://www.monash.edu/pharm/current/