Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry is an integral part of pharmacy education involving several aspects of new drug discovery and development in collaboration with other disciplines of pharmacy. As a part of undergraduate teaching and learning, various subjects included are Pharmaceutical Inorganic Chemistry, Biochemistry, Pharmaceutical Organic Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, and Computer-Aided Drug Design. The separate subject for practical provides extensive and diversified experience to students to perform different experiments from all required areas. Extensive use of modern audio-visual teaching aids and molecular models make the lessons interesting and student-centric. The department has collaborations with various research organisations, industries and basic science departments where students can participate in interdisciplinary research projects relevant to the core areas. The research projects help students to get deep insights in to the research area and help to develop expertise. The students are also encouraged for various other activities like personality, communication and soft skills development; scientific writing; workshops for improvement in presentation and documentation skills, etc. Alumni students of the department are placed at diverse places like R&D, CRO and academic institutions, etc. Many past students are also pursuing their doctoral studies in reputed universities across the globe.
The Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry is constituted of four spacious laboratories; two postgraduate and two undergraduate laboratories. The laboratories are designed and equipped with several unique features and facilities including a central ventilation system and very sophisticated fume hoods attached to nitrogen, vacuum, and water supply. Emergency shower rooms are provided in each laboratory with a special focus on the safety of the workforce. The laboratories are spacious and ventilated, having adequate space for students to carry out experimental work smoothly.
Research laboratories are equipped with various basic and essential instruments useful for the synthesis of NCEs. This includes Multi-reaction System, Precision Digital Balance, Multimagnetic Stirrer, Rotamantle, Constant Temperature Water-bath, Digital Mechanical Stirrers, High-Speed Centrifuge, and Hot Air Oven. Many advanced instruments to facilitate the research work including Microwave Synthesizer, FT-IR with Microscope, MPLC, Rotary Vacuum Evaporator, Precision Digital Melting Point Apparatus, Cryogenic Bath and Digital Polarimeter are also available.
The Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry has students registered for Doctoral studies in Pharmaceutical Chemistry. In the future, the department is planning to extend its wings extensively in the areas of computational chemistry, microwave-assisted organic synthesis, green chemistry and solid-phase synthesis by registering several doctorates and postgraduate students from various parts of the country.
The department also focuses on the development of novel NCEs targeting various diseases. The effectiveness of designing a compound depends upon how precisely it binds with important amino acids of the target receptor and orients itself in the binding pocket, so as to inhibit the target protein. The study of the binding pocket of the target receptor gives a great insight which is followed by conventional ligand-based and structure-based computational approaches. Overall, in the design process of the novel compounds; pharmacophore-based virtual screening, 3D-QSAR studies and molecular dynamics assisted molecular docking study is carried out before actual synthesis.
Several students have registered for the PhD degree in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and received a fellowship from INSPIRE-DST, ICMR, CSIR, CSMNRF-19, CM-Shodh Yojana, and Nirma University. Students of the department have also received international fellowship. The department has received Research Projects for more than four million rupees from various agencies like DST, GUJCOST, GSBTM, BRNS, and Nirma University. The department has published several research papers in International Journals like European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Bioorganic Chemistry, PLOS, RSC Advances, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Letters, MedChemComm, Behavioural Brain Research, Structural Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry Research; as well as several review papers in journals like Medicinal Research Reviews, European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Expert Opinion in Therapeutic Patents, Mini-Reviews in Medicinal Chemistry, Current Medicinal Chemistry, etc. Faculty members of the department has also published three Indian patents and are involved in various consultancy services. The department regularly organizes several National seminars like Recent Advances in Drug Discovery, Hands-on Training in Drug Discovery Software, Workshop on Interpretation of Spectral Data etc.