Molecular Targets and Drug Discovery, Master's Degree Concentration

This course will cover methodological approaches to bioassay development for high-throughput screening. Both cell-based (cytotoxicity, cytoprotection, high content imaging, and reporter systems) and cell-free assay systems (enzyme, FRET, time-resolved fluorescence, quenching assays, and immunological assays) will be included with discussion of the potential promise and pitfalls associated with each assay system. Various assay formats, visualization techniques, and current developments in assay technology will be discussed. Project management techniques will be utilized to aid in the process of assay development. Prerequisites: 410.603 Advanced Cell Biology or admissions equivalent.

This course will investigate current and potential molecular targets in cancer, including kinases, DNA repair pathways, epigenetic modifications, immunotherapy approaches, and hormonal, metastasis, and angiogenesis targets. Discussion will also include topics on what defines a molecular target and the methods by which they are evaluated. Prerequisites: 410.603 Advanced Cell Biology or equivalent, 410.604 Cellular Signal Transduction or equivalent.

Drug Design and Chemical Libraries explores pharmacological space with an emphasis on disciplines related to drug discovery, and an understanding of the properties desirable in a drug. Medicinal chemistry, natural product chemistry, focused synthetic libraries, and combinatorial chemistry will be covered. The application of Lipinski's rules for assessing drug-like molecules will be discussed in detail, as well as methods for chemical analysis, in silico drug design, molecular modeling, and compound storage and handling. Also, techniques used for assessing and harnessing chemical diversity for drug discovery will be discussed. Students will gain a fundamental understanding of small molecules at the atomic level as well as insights into the structure-activity relationship. Both are critical to the design and synthesis of chemical libraries that efficiently explore therapeutically useful chemical space and to drug design. Prerequisites: 410.603 Advanced Cell Biology or equivalent.

This graduate-level virtual laboratory immerses students in the computational techniques that drive modern drug discovery and target validation. Through a series of hands-on modules, students will learn to design, implement, and interpret computational workflows used across academia, biotech, and pharmaceutical R&D. The course emphasizes practical skill-building in molecular modeling, structure preparation, ligand design, docking, virtual screening, cheminformatics, and ADMET prediction. Students will work with real protein structures, chemical libraries, and biological datasets to evaluate target druggability, identify potential lead compounds, and assess pharmacological properties. Using industry-standard and open-source tools, students will gain experience constructing reproducible computational pipelines that mirror early-stage discovery processes. The course integrates structural biology, medicinal chemistry principles, and data-driven decision-making to provide a comprehensive understanding of how computational methods support and accelerate drug development. By the end of the course, students will be able to independently execute computational experiments, critically analyze results, and communicate findings in formats aligned with professional scientific practice. Prerequisites: 410.751 Drug Design and Chemical Libraries.

This course will use hands-on instruction in automated bioassay systems for high-throughput screening as an entry point to covering pertinent aspects of HTS, such as data manipulation, storage, and analysis; liquid handling robotics, microtiter plate washing, manipulation, and barcoding; HTS assay detectors; and automated devices for assay setup, validation, and visualization. Cost considerations, HTS amenable assay systems, and miniaturization and scale-up will also be discussed. Prerequisites: 410.603 Advanced Cell Biology or equivalent, and 410.696 Bioassay Development.