Welcome to the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Washington here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest!

What is Medicinal Chemistry?
Medicinal Chemistry is a discipline with a traditional focus on organic synthetic chemistry with the broad goals of drug discovery and optimization. The Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Washington, since its inception in 1980, has always departed somewhat from this tradition given the focus of many of its faculty on the research areas of mechanistic drug metabolism, toxicology and bioanalytical chemistry. In recent years research activities in the Department have been broadened further by the addition of several faculty members with expertise in the areas of molecular modeling, biological mass spectrometry and biological NMR.

What Research Opportunities Exist?
The faculty in Medicinal Chemistry offer diverse opportunities for study and research at the interface between chemistry and biology with emphasis on issues of biomedical importance. These include the role of phase I and II biotransformation processes in toxification and detoxification reactions, the metabolic consequences of phenotypic and genotypic diversity in the population, drug metabolism and enzyme kinetics, drug/drug and drug/herbal interactions, protein engineering, mechanisms of pathogen resistance, molecular modeling of peptides and proteins and vaccine development - to name but a few. In addition to specialized training acquired during their medicinal chemistry thesis work, graduates acquire a broad foundation in biochemistry, pharmacology and molecular biology which is important in the rapidly evolving, multidisciplinary biomedical arena. This is aided by the Department’s commitment to interdisciplinary efforts in the study of metabolism-based mechanisms of drug interactions with faculty in Pharmaceutics, a pre-doctoral training grant in the pharmacological sciences with Pharmaceutics and Pharmacology, as well as faculty involvement in the School of Public Health’s Center for Ecogenetics and Environmental Health and in the Biomedical Structure and Design Program.

What Is Our Mission?
The goal of graduate program training in Medicinal Chemistry is to prepare highly trained, versatile individuals for a career in the pharmaceutical sciences; we are proud of our record of outstanding graduate students who now enjoy fruitful careers in academia, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries as well as with government and other regulatory agencies. If you are interested further in our Doctoral Program, please surf around our newly-designed web site and feel free to contact us directly if you require any additional information.