Overview of the Medicinal Chemistry Program

The Department of Medicinal Chemistry is located on two floors in Malott Hall on the beautiful KU campus. Currently composed of eleven full-time faculty members and roughly thirty graduate and thirty postdoctoral students, the department offers a stimulating environment for state-of-the-art research.

Research programs of the faculty cover an unusually broad range of scientific interests, including: enzyme inhibition; the discovery and isolation of novel antitumor, antibiotic, and antiviral molecules; combinatorial chemistry; drug metabolism and toxicology; computer-aided drug design; organic synthesis; stereochemistry and its relation to biological problems; peptide structure and function; amino acid chemistry; and neurochemistry. For more details about each faculty member's research, see the research statements included later in this booklet.

Visitors are often impressed by the comraderie and sharing of interests that permeates the department. The breadth of possibilities in medicinal chemistry is also enhanced by the department's proximity to the rest of the Kansas School of Pharmacy, including the Departments of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Pharmaceutical Chemistry.

Other neighbors in Malott and the adjoining Haworth Hall include the chemistry and biochemistry departments. Active research collaborations and common graduate courses eliminate barriers and create a thriving scientific community at Kansas.

KU medicinal chemistry graduates are widely employed and their success has contributed to the high esteem in which the department is held on the national and international levels. Kansas Ph.D.'s hold important positions in the pharmaceutical and agrichemical industries (at Eli Lilly, Abbott, Warner-Lambert, and Pfizer, to name a few) and are professors at such highly regarded institutions as the University of California at San Francisco, Boston University, Minnesota, and Ohio State.

The editor and two of the four senior editors of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry obtained their Ph.D. degrees with faculty members of the KU Medicinal Chemistry department, and many graduates currently serve as chair of their department or division.