A computer-aided drug discovery system for chemistry teaching

CHED 395

Jeremy G Frey, j.g.frey@soton.ac.uk1, Robert J Gledhill1, Andrew Milsted1, Sarah Kent1, Jonathan W Essex, jwe1@soton.ac.uk1, Brian Hudson1, and W Graham Richards, graham.richards@chem.ox.ac.uk2. (1) School of Chemistry, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom, (2) Central Chemistry Lab, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QH, United Kingdom
The e-Malaria Project is designed to teach aspects of chemistry through exposure to drug design concepts. Initially it was a way to bring together school students with university researchers in the hunt for a new antimalaria drug. The design challenge offered is to use a distributed drug search and selection system to design potential antimalaria drugs accessed via an accessible Web interface. This e-science project displays the results of the trials in an accessible manner, giving students an opportunity for discussion and debate both with peers and with university contacts. The project was implemented using distributed computing techniques. This provides access to greater computing power and allows a much more complex and detailed formulation of the drug design problem to be tackled for research, teaching, and learning. The project is useful in undergraduate teaching where the system was used to support investigations of drug modeling and QSAR approaches.
 

Using Pharmaceuticals to Teach Chemistry: Educational Innovations for Majors and Non-Majors
8:30 AM-11:15 AM, Tuesday, 12 September 2006 San Francisco Marriott -- Salon A1, Oral

Division of Chemical Education

The 232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, September 10-14, 2006