Your marks (in-class and online quizzes, mid-term exam, laboratory, oral presentation and final exam) will be placed on the CBMS606 web site. 

Your final grade will be based on the mark from the aggregation of the individual assessments, with 50% or greater needed overall for a pass.

Medical certificates or official documents must be lodged as part of a disruption to studies request at ask.mq.edu.au as soon as possible if you are absent for any of the assessment tasks or miss the due date for any of the on-line tasks.  If your reason is regarded as valid for missing the in-class quizzes, you will be given an average of the other quizzes done; with the on-line quizzes an extension of time will be provided if the disruption to studies request is approved.  If you miss the oral presentation, you will need to organise an alternative time with the unit convenor asap.  If you miss the mid-session test or final exam for a valid reason, a supplementary test/exam will be provided.  An extension for submission of the lab reports/lab books will also be provided if the disruption to studies approval is obtained.  Any assessment tasks not submitted on time that does not get approval through the disruption to studies request will get a 10% deduction of marks for every weekday late.

Final Examination Details:  The examination timetable will be available in Draft form approximately eight weeks before the commencement of the examinations and in final form approximately four weeks before the commencement of the examinations.  You are expected to present yourself for examination at the time and place designated by the University in the Examination Timetable.  This could be any day after the final week of semester and up until the final day of the official examination period.  It is Macquarie University policy to not set early examinations for individuals or groups of students.  All students are expected to ensure that they are available until the end of the teaching semester, that is, the final day of the official examination period. 

The only exception to sitting an examination at the designated time is because of documented illness or unavoidable disruption.  Absence from the final exam will result in a grade of F except in the case of a genuine medical emergency or misadventure as defined by the University (see below).  In these circumstances you should apply for a supplementary exam at ask.mq.edu.au.

NOTE:  If you receive special consideration for the final exam, a supplementary exam will be scheduled in the interval between the regular exam period and the start of the next session.  By making a special consideration application for the final exam you are declaring yourself available for a resit during the supplementary examination period and will not be eligible for a second special consideration approval based on pre-existing commitments.  Please ensure you are familiar with the policy prior to submitting an application. You can check the supplementary exam information page on FSE101 in iLearn (bit.ly/FSESupp) for dates, and approved applicants will receive an individual notification one week prior to the exam with the exact date and time of their supplementary examination.

Unit Web Page

The web page for this unit can be found at ilearn.mq.edu.au.

Just login and follow the prompts to CBMS306/606 Medicinal Chemistry.

You can use any web browser such as Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari to login.

iLearn is the name for Macquarie University’s Learning Management System (LMS). The iLearn online learning environment enables learning, teaching, communication and collaboration. It is used to make lecture notes, laboratory notes, discussion forums, digital lecture recordings and other learning resources available to students online.

CBMS606 is a 3 credit point unit and will require an average of 10 hours of work (contact and self study time) per week over the 15 weeks. For students with weak chemistry backgrounds, more time per week will probably be necessary to perform satisfactorily in this unit. CBMS606 is run with three hours of lectures/tutorials per week, along with 4 hour blocks of laboratories/ workshops. Students are expected to attend all lectures, tutorials and laboratory classes. Active participation by the students in all of these fora is encouraged.

• Lectures will be presented as a combination of formal lectures and interactive tutorial sessions. Some lecture material will be available on the unit web site, while other material will be provided in the lecture class. Learning is an active process, and as such, you must engage with the material. This means reading the textbook (and beyond) before and after lectures, attempting the assignment questions and other questions, discussing the concepts with your classmates and lecturers. Do not be afraid to ask questions – everyone benefits from a robust and open discussion of the topics.
• Quizzes and a mid session test will also be run in the lecture session. The in class quizzes will cover any material prior to that day’s lecture, therefore all students are expected to keep up to date with lecture material through revision each week. Online quizzes are also provided, with accompanying resources. The quizzes and mid session test are designed to allow you to continuously learn and to identify what you understand and the areas that you need to spend more time on, with minimal assessment penalty.
• All laboratory experiments will be conducted in groups. These have a highly collaborative and investigative approach, where you will be designing and synthesising a series of sulfonamides and subsequently testing them for antibacterial activity to determine the important features for their antibacterial activity. This laboratory work is designed to give real life experiences in research by involving students in the design of the experiments, using literature procedures as a guide, and trouble shooting to identify the best experimental conditions. It will emphasise the importance of being highly prepared for all experiments and being fully aware of all safety procedures, proper recording and reporting of all data and interpreting of all results, and having an analytical and inquisitive approach.

Further information on technology used: You are expected to access the unit web site frequently This contains important information including notes on the topics to be covered; the laboratory manual; What You Need to Know Sheets; your marks for practicals, quizzes and the mid-session exam; and past exam papers, including with answers. Additionally, the web site will also be used to post important messages and links to internet facilities and sites of relevance to the course, downloadable software, and lots of other interesting material.

All students are required to undertake the Kahn Academy course on spectroscopy before the end of the mid-semester break https://www.khanacademy.org/science/organic-chemistry/spectroscopy-jay. There are also resources in the library (PDF file in special reserve to help you with this.

If you do not have your own computer you may wish to access the Medicinal Chemistry web resources on campus using the PC computers in the Library or in the C5C computer laboratories. To view notes on all the topics and past exams on the unit web site, you will require Adobe Acrobat Reader Version 9 or later to be installed on your computer. Acrobat Reader can be downloaded from the Adobe web site https://get.adobe.com/reader/?loc=uk. If you are using the computers in the library, then Acrobat has already been installed. Please note information will also be sent by email to your student email account so please look at your email account on a frequent basis.

You are expected to access SciFinder Scholar and Reaxys to assist in searching the literature. These are available through the library web site.

Hand-held calculators will be occasionally used in tutorials and practicals, for tests and in the final examination. Note that text-retrieval calculators are not allowed in the in-semester tests or final examination.

Lectures/tutorials: 

The first 75% of CBMS606 will provide an overview of the important concepts in medicinal chemistry and the last 25% will concentrate on case studies. CBMS606 has three hours/week allocated to lectures/tutorials. While formal lectures will be presented, discussion sessions will also form a major part of the classes. This will be supplemented by practical classes utilising synthetic chemistry, spectroscopic methods and bioassays.

The laboratory classes will be run in groups and students are required to, in part, design the experiments, using literature procedures as a guide.  Considerable preparation is therefore needed. Past students have found this a valuable experience as it gives them a realistic approach to conducting research.  The laboratory classes will run every week, Friday 2-6 pm except the mid-session break and week 13.  The week 13 lab class time will be used for the final laboratory report (patent) preparation.

In week 1, the laboratory class will be a preparative session, in which the groups will discuss structure-activity relationships and use this to rationally choose their target sulfonamides, learn how to use SciFinder Scholar and Reaxys for literature searching and start to identify key preparative methods for the sulfonamides, and prepare flow diagrams and risk assessment forms for commencement of the wet laboratory classes (beginning week 2). 

This week 1 preparative session will be run in the lab room 14SCOA 308 (E7B308; first year labs, unless otherwise indicated), and commence at 2 pm.  The laboratory classes will run from week 2 in laboratory 14SCOA 349/350 (E7B349/350; unless otherwise indicated).  The 2-6pm session of week 13 will be used for finalising the laboratory report and the write-up room will be available for this.

                Topics                                            Lect/Tut  Lecturer

• Overview of Medicinal Chemistry        wk 1-2       PK/JJ
• Cellular targets (‘receptors’) for drug action
• Binding of drugs to ‘receptors’
• Interaction of ‘receptors’ with agonists and antagonists  
• Protein structure and function            wk 2-3      JJ
• Enzyme kinetics
• Interaction of enzymes with inhibitors (competitive, non-competitive)
• Nucleic acids                                      wk 4      JJ  
• Drug discovery from nature                wk 5-8    JJ
• Drugs from synthesis
• Optimisation of lead compound, structure-activity relationships
• Physicochemical properties of drugs          
• Drug absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion
• Prodrugs       
• Quantitative structure-activity relationships          wk 9-10      PK
• Combinatorial Chemistry
• Case Studies
• Case 1 (G-coupled protein receptor agonists and antagonists) PK
• 3 minute Pharmaceutical agent presentations    wk 10 JJ
• Antibacterial agents                              wk 11-12 AP
• Discussion of sulfonamide antibacterial assays and lab report    wk 13   JJ/PK
• Revision                                                wk 12-13    JJ/AP

The unit is being run similarly to 2018 with these exceptions:

1) requirement of completion of a spectroscopy workshop (on-line)

2) drafting of your group lab results as a Provisional Patent rather than a paper for J. Med. Chem.

3) different marking scheme for the practical component

4) Pharmaceutical agent assignment is a written assignment (no oral)

5) Prof. Karuso is convening the unit instead of Assoc. Prof. Jamie.

Peter Karuso and Joanne Jamie are the main teaching staff in this unit.  There are no formal office hours for the teaching staff, however, you are expected to contact them on any questions you have with their topics and the unit convenor (Peter Karuso) on any administrative questions as soon as your concern arises. You are encouraged to phone or email to organise a meeting. You may also wish to ask questions using the discussion board on the website.