MDD611 Research Ethics and Scientific Integrity
This course describes the general rules and ethics in scientific research in terms of designing experiments, executing experiments, reporting to mentors, collaborating with other researchers, publishing data and managing potential competing interests. On completion of this course, candidates should be aware of the proper ways for research conduct.
MDD612 Research Methodology and Applied Biostatistics
This is an advanced course in biostatistics and research methodology. This course focuses upon organizing and summarizing data; sampling methods and statistical distributions; estimation and hypotheses about means, proportions and variances base on large and small samples; analysis of variance; regression analysis (simple and multiple); Chi-square-tests; nonparametric methods; and correlation coefficient, bio statistical data and other statistics relevant to pharmaceutical sciences research.
MDD613 Drug Discovery and Development
The course provides an overview on drug discovery, screening and preformulation studies. It covers step-by step the process of lead discovery and its screening using different in vitro and in vivo pharmacological models. Also, the course includes the determination of the drug physicochemical and pharmacokinetic characteristics. Finally, the students will have a general overview of the clinical trials protocols and designs.
MDD614 Research Techniques
Introduction to laboratory work employing modern techniques available in computational medicinal chemistry, organic synthesis, purification, and identification; application of basic principles to graduate study and research. Moreover, the techniques used for determining physicochemical properties of new drug delivery systems are summarized. The course emphasizes specifically on qualitative methods, engaging in a wide range of research techniques in pharmaceutical chemistry, pharmacology, pharmaceutics, and related fields.
MDD 615 Seminar I, MDD 622 Seminar II, MDD 712 Seminar III and MDD 722 Seminar IV
In the seminar course series, students will be exposed to a broad range of research in the fields of drug discovery, development and delivery. Presentations will be given by students, internal and external expert speakers and researchers from the region and affiliated Universities in the US.
MDD621-1 Drug Design
This course includes detailed studies of different classic and modern drug design approaches, lead modifications and applications from the literature. In addition, molecular interactions in drug discovery and their importance, fundamentals of theoretical and computational medicinal chemistry, virtual screening and molecular docking are also discussed in this course.
MDD621-2 Advanced Drug Synthesis
This course focus on scope and limitations of important synthetic methods of organic chemistry and applications to drug synthesis with a close look at the structural concepts and mechanistic patterns that are fundamental to organic chemistry. Retrosynthesis, several disconnection approaches, and multistep syntheses are also discussed as important tools in drug synthesis. Several examples of the synthesis of different drugs from the literature are covered in the course as well.
MDD621-3 Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology
This course describes the basic principles of molecular pharmacology with emphasis on drug receptor interaction, types of receptors, secondary messengers, DNA response elements and intracellular signal transduction. In addition, this course focuses on some molecular phenomena, such as cell cycle distribution, apoptosis, autophagy, methuosis and necrosis. On completion of this course, candidates will be familiar with many essential aspects of molecular pharmacology.
MDD621-4 In Vivo Pharmacological models
This course describes the general principles of animal handling and the use of animal models in researches related to pharmacology and drug discovery with emphasis on behavioural animal models, CNS animal models, endocrine diseases related animal model, cancer animal models, NSAID related animal model and autoimmune disease animal models. On completion of this course, candidates will be able to select the suitable animal model for each particular discipline of pharmacological research.
MDD621-5 Advanced Pharmaceutics
The course discusses the principles of advanced pharmaceutics: physicochemical principles to pharmaceutical systems like-solubility and distribution phenomena, significance of complexation and their impact on pharmaceutical preparation/processing; Identify specific rheological behavior with their corresponding rheograms. The solution kinetics of drugs degradation, rate processes and reaction order for simple and complex reactions are discussed. This course is designed to familiarize students with both physiological factors and physicochemical characteristics of the drug that influences the drug absorption from gastro-intestinal tract. The students also study the biopharmaceutics of oral and non-oral medication, factors affecting bioavailability of drugs including pharmacokinetic variability, and biopharmaceutics of modified release and new drug delivery systems.
MDD621-6 Drug Delivery and Targeting
This course teaches students the recent advances in the drug delivery systems. The course allows students to be up to date with the novel formulation and their applications in brain, tumor, hepatic and lymphatic targeting. Moreover, new aspects of vaginal dosage forms and vaccine delivery systems are covered in this course.
MDD621-7 Spectrometric Identification of Organic Compounds
This course covers basic principles and theories of different spectrometric techniques used in the structural elucidation of organic compounds and drugs such as IR, 1HNMR, 13CNMR, mass spectrometry, and UV spectroscopy. It also includes applications of these spectrometric techniques in the identification of organic compounds, with emphasis on interpretation of spectra, especially NMR. In addition, the chemical identification and structural elucidation of different compounds and drugs from literature using several spectroscopic techniques will be covered as a direct application for this course in the chemical synthesis of drugs and organic compounds.
MDD621-8 Pharmacogenetics and Pharmacogenomics
This course will provide a general understanding of the molecular approaches to genotyping, genotype/phenotype relationships and gene-environment interactions as determinants of disease susceptibility, response to treatment and incidence/severity of adverse drug reaction. It will examine the molecular basis for inter-individual variability in drug disposition and application of that information for individualized medicine. It will also cover the application of gene-array, gene-sequencing and gene editing (CRISPR) technologies for the identification/modification of disease susceptibility and drug response pharmacology.
MDD621-9 Novel Drug Carriers
This course introduces students to the novel drug delivery system carriers; such as nanoparticles, nanovesicles and micelles. The course covers the fundamental principles, the strategies and techniques used for preparing various nanoparticulate drug delivery carriers. Recent advances of nanoparticulate carriers and its physical properties, physicochemical characterization methods, challenges and applications in the field of drug delivery will be discussed.
MDD623 Directed Research
This course will be in the form of one-to-one meetings between the student and the supervisor. It will focus on developing the research idea, research question, research methods. At the end of the semester, the student will write and present a research protocol that describes the study objectives, subjects, design, variables and measurements that will be made and the way in which it will be analyzed.
MDD711 Thesis I and MDD721 Thesis II
Individual research under the direction of faculty supervisor(s) leading to preparation, completion, and oral defense of a thesis. The student must report on progress to the program director via the main supervisor, at the end of each thesis course. The thesis evaluation committee is composed of the main supervisor, an internal examiner and an external examiner. In order to ensure quality and meet international standards, the external examiner will be from one of the western universities such as Virginia Commonwealth University, Wayne State University, Kingstone University, University of Arizona, University of Iowa, or University of Saint Joseph with which we already have Memorandum of Understandings (MOUs) and/or existing collaboration.
