Industrial pharmacy

General expected learning outcomes The course in INNOVATIVE AND BIOTECHNOLOGICAL DRUGS WITH ANTICANCER ACTIVITY aims to initiate the student, in a multidisciplinary study, in the approach to very recent and current science, which has made great strides in the last twenty years in various areas of research: epigenetics. Brief topics in genetics, biology, biochemistry, pharmacology, and toxicology will be covered as indispensable notions for study, although the main thrust of the course should be chemical-pharmaceutical, i.e., the validation of various epigenetic targets for various diseases, foremost among them cancer, and the rational design and latest methods of identifying compounds that interfere with or modulate these targets. Advanced molecular biology and biochemistry techniques for the production of biotechnological drugs will be specifically illustrated. Specific expected learning outcomes 1. Knowledge and Understanding The student will be familiar with all chemical-pharmaceutical aspects of epigenetic ligands with special emphasis on those that are approved or in late-stage clinical trials. Fundamental notions will cover catalytic mechanisms and biological implications of targets involved in disease development. In the section on biotech drugs with antitumor activity, she/he will be introduced to the use of advanced techniques for biotech drug discovery and production. 2. Applying knowledge and understanding At the end of the course, the student will know how to recognize, when possible, known pharmacophoric patterns useful for designing new ligands for a particular epigenetic target. She/he will know the most relevant structure-activity relationships relative to these compounds, and which points on the drug can be chemically altered and/or which cannot be altered on pain of loss of biological activity. She/he will know the effects of these compounds on altered signalling pathways leading to disease, with reference to apoptotic, necrotic, and autophagic pathways. She/he will know the most important and widespread therapeutic problems and available therapeutic solutions in the context of epigenetic therapy. The application of advanced biotechnology techniques will enable the student to understand the importance of the evolution of personalized and target-specific anticancer therapies. 3. Making judgements The lectures will be all interactive, in which the lecturer will ask students continuous questions to stimulate them and develop their critical sense. These questions will also serve to evaluate and prompt students to make connections with all that they have studied so far, avoiding considering the study of the subject an end in itself but integrating medicinal chemistry in the light of the knowledge they have already acquired, both chemical (organic chemistry, biochemistry) and biological (pathology, pharmacology, pharmacognosy, toxicology). 4. Communication skills Evaluation of the student's study will be carried out solely by an oral test, which will cover the topics of the program, testing the student's ability to communicate what he or she has learned. Much appreciated in recent years by the students is the PowerPoint mode, in which the lecturer assigns them a scientific paper in epigenetics and they have to prepare and describe in a ppt presentation the assumptions, rationale and results of the same, also with a critical judgment on the work of the authors and the construction/conduct of the paper. A further question will concern the part of biotechnological drugs. 5. Learning skills The student will find the in-depth study of what was heard in class on scientific reviews suggested by the teachers.