About the Book:

Essentials of Pharmaceutical Chemistry is an introduction to the subject covering all of the core material necessary to provide an understanding of the basic chemistry of drug molecules. Now a core text on many university courses, the book contains numerous worked examples and problems.

The fourth edition has been revised and updated to include new chapters on:

·         Chromatographic Methods of Analysis

·         Medicinal Chemistry - The Science of Drug Design.

Essentials of Pharmaceutical Chemistry will be of particular interest to pharmacy undergraduate and students of chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences.

Review of the previous edition:

Contents:

1.    Chemistry of acids and bases

2.    Partition coefficient and biopharmacy

3.    Physicochemical properties of drugs

4.    Stereochemistry

5.    Drug metabolism

6.    Volumetric analysis of drugs

7.    Analytical spectroscopy

8.    Chromatographic methods of analysis

9.    Stability of drugs and medicines

10. Kinetics of drug stability

11. Licensing of drugs and the British Pharmacopoeia

12. Medicinal chemistry: the science of rational drug design

13. Answers to problems

About the Author:

Donald Cairns obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in pharmacy from the University of Strathclyde in 1980 and after a pre-registration year spent in hospital pharmacy, he returned to Strathclyde to undertake a PhD on the synthesis and properties of benzylimidazolines. Following a year as a post-doctoral research fellow in the department of pharmacy at Sunderland Polytechnic (now the University of Sunderland), Dr Cairns moved to Leicester Polytechnic (now De Montfort University) where he held a five-year lectureship in pharmacy.ln 1992 Dr Cairns was appointed senior lecturer in medicinal chemistry in Sunderland School of Pharmacy and in

2003 moved to a post of Associate Head of the School of Pharmacy at The Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. ln 2006, he was promoted to Professor of Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry at RGU and in 2010 was appointed Acting Head of the School of Pharmacy and Life Sciences.

Professor Cairns has served as external examiner at Strathclyde, Liver-pool, Aberdeen and Belfast Schools of Pharmacy and has authored over 70 peer reviewed research papers.

His research interests include the design and synthesis of selective anti-cancer agents, the molecular modelling of drug-DNA interactions and the design of prodrugs for the treatment of nephropathic cystinosis.

Donald Cairns is a member of the General Pharmaceutical Council, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists and in 2008 was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. ln 2006 he was appointed to the British Pharmacopoeia Commission and serves on an Expert Advisory Group of the Commission on Human Medicines.

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.