Designing Medicine

Caught

Hiya! So I'm a sixth year who wants to design medicine and I'm not really sure what course to take. I really love chemistry as it's so interesting, but I find it challenging, where as I find biology really easy but often boring.

Everything I've read online seems to contradict other websites about what I'd need to do and what my title would be. I figured I should be in R&D forming compounds to see how they affect cells. There are so many courses which seem to be along the right track (I'll need a PhD I'd imagine though). Trinity and UCD both offer medicinal chemistry, which I thought would be perfect but I asked UCD at higher options (I think it was them anyway) and they said I'd want to become a pharmacist? I've looked into biomedical engineering, which seems to be all about designing machines though, right?

Does anyone know what undergraduate degree I should be looking to do? My worst fear of course is doing the wrong degree and ending up with no chance of getting employed in drug design. I'll be going to the TCD and UCD's open days soon but I want to go in with questions to ask about the courses I'm interested in, rather than appearing like I've done no research!

Thanks for any replies(:

chanste

Some of the pharmacology people might advise better on what course to do (I would have thought pharmacology but like you say it probably requires a PhD anyway so there are probably a few routes in).

Anyway the reason I'm posting is just to point out that something which may seem hard now, is possibly just because with the mere 2 years of exposure you have at LC level, some of the concepts in chemistry may be something of a mental block making the whole thing seem difficult... challenge yourself to get past the bits bothering you now and you may find you take naturally to things that cause difficulty for other people. Bottom line is you should stick with what you like more so that what you think you are good at. If you like something enough and are willing to work it is unlikely that you can't get past these mental blocks. You'd be surprised but something that's difficult now may seem piss simple in the future when you've more experience and time to let it sink in.

Caught

Thank you so much for the advice. Yeah, I've generally been getting As and B's chemistry since I woke up in the class (I wasn't too interested until last December). I can get most of the concepts once I go through why they happen and what it looks like. My teachers for both Chemistry and Biology said they think I'll get an A1-B2 in the Leaving Cert so I won't really know which I was best at until then! Thank you.

beardedmaster

Medicinal Chemistry or pure Chemistry, completely.
Pharmacology is the study of how drugs effect the body - Pharmacologists study the effects of the drug, and will be involved in their production, but it's the Medicinal Chemists who are more particular about the design of the drug itself.

Caught

Thank you so much! I'll be asking lots of questions at UCDs open day on Saturday about medicinal chemistry so!

heykevin

pharmacy is your solution...

revz

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=67727753

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=65684680

I was in a similar position to you a while back, from the feedback I've gathered further study after the degree is more important.
I decided to go with the pharmacy route. I'm in third year, there's a fair bit of medicinal chemistry. You also learn about what you'd need to add to the drug molecule to make it into a tablet/capsule etc.
Whereas I'd presume in medicinal chemistry you'd solely focus on the chemical molecule itself.
Someone mentioned in one of the threads I made about how with pharmacy you do an intern year and can get your foot in the door in some places; when I was doing some work experience in a pharmacy last month the intern pharmacist at the time was doing 6 months work in that pharmacy and then is doing 6 months in Pfizer, so that was proved true.