Advanced strategy for teaching pharmaceutical chemistry courses by implementing pharmacophores strategy instead of SAR one

Abstract

After studying pharmaceutical chemistry course, the students should learn exact relation between chemical structures of drugs (medicines) and their biological activity. This means that when students watch the chemical  structure of any drug, they should predict their biological activity at a  definite target. In this article a new method was implemented, for the first time, to predict the biological activity of any drug based on  pharmacophores concept rather than the structure-activity-relationship  (SAR) one. The pharmacophores are template that could represent the  interactions exerted by the essential function groups that are carried by  chemical nucleus of the drug. The nucleus of any drug acts only as a  scaffold to carry the essential groups to the nearest point to the  complementary function groups at the binding sites of the drug targets. If we change the chemical nucleus by bioisosteric one that have the same interactions pattern, it will exert the same activity. Implementing this  technique in teaching pharmaceutical chemistry courses may be more  beneficial and accurate for the students to predict the biological activity of
any drugs. [AJCE 4(2), Special Issue, May 2014]