Research Topic · Peer-Reviewed

Medicinal Chemistry

Medicinal chemistry is the discipline that designs, synthesizes, and characterizes chemical compounds intended to act as therapeutic agents, uniting synthetic organic chemistry with pharmacology, biochemistry, and structural analysis. Its central aim is to discover and optimize molecules that interact with biologica…

Curated from this journal's research 📚 7 peer-reviewed articles cited Cited 9× across the literature 🔖 ISSN 2377-2549 🗓 Reviewed July 2026

Overview

Medicinal chemistry is the discipline that designs, synthesizes, and characterizes chemical compounds intended to act as therapeutic agents, uniting synthetic organic chemistry with pharmacology, biochemistry, and structural analysis. Its central aim is to discover and optimize molecules that interact with biological targets to produce a desired pharmacological effect while minimizing toxicity and unwanted activity. The field encompasses the synthesis of candidate molecules through reactions that build and modify complex organic structures, including multicomponent and solvent-free methods that improve efficiency. Natural products and plant-derived extracts are a recurring source of bioactive scaffolds, exemplified by investigations of antimycotic and analgesic activity in compounds from medicinal plants. Once made, candidates are evaluated for biological activity and refined through structure-activity relationship studies that link chemical features to potency, selectivity, and pharmacokinetic behavior. Characterization and design increasingly rely on computational and spectroscopic tools. Density functional theory and vibrational analysis elucidate molecular structure, electronic properties, and reactivity, supporting rational design alongside experimental synthesis. By integrating synthesis, biological testing, and modeling, medicinal chemistry guides the progression of hit compounds toward leads and ultimately drugs, addressing challenges of efficacy, stability, and safety. It plays a foundational role in the development of new treatments for infectious, inflammatory, and other diseases.

Research published in this journal

7 peer-reviewed articles, ranked by relevance. Each links to its DOI.

How this research is being cited

The 7 articles above have been cited 9 times in the scholarly literature. Citation data via OpenAlex and Crossref, updated Jun 2026.

A sample of recent works citing this journal's research on Medicinal Chemistry, linking to each citing work.

Editorial oversight

Curated from peer-reviewed research published in New Developments in Chemistry (ISSN 2377-2549).

Journal editorial board
Annarita Del Gatto · Italy Bharat Gurale · United States Palani ELUMALAI · United Kingdom

This page summarises published research for orientation; it is not medical or professional advice.