medicinal chemistry

Pharmacophore model of the benzodiazepine binding site on the GABAA receptor Medicinal or pharmaceutical chemistry is a scientific discipline at the intersection of chemistry and pharmacy involved with designing and developing pharmaceutical drugs. Medicinal chemistry involves the identification, synthesis and development of new chemical entities suitable for therapeutic use by using structure. It also includes the study of existing drugs, their biological properties, and their quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSAR).

Medicinal chemistry is a basically interdisciplinary science combining organic chemistry with biochemistry, computational chemistry, pharmacology, molecular biology, statistics, and physical chemistry.