A  Multidisciplinary Team-Based Classroom Exercise for Small Molecule Drug Discovery

Charlotte A. Dodson; Stephen E. Flower; Mark Thomas

doi:10.1021/acs.jchemed.3c00066

A Multidisciplinary Team-Based Classroom Exercise for Small Molecule Drug Discovery

Charlotte A. Dodson, Stephen E. Flower, Mark Thomas

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

2 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

Industrial drug discovery teams encompass scientists from multiple specialties and require participants to communicate effectively across disciplinary boundaries. In this paper, we present an undergraduate or graduate classroom simulation of this environment. Over a series of five workshops, student teams of mixed scientific backgrounds perform five iterations of the chemistry cycle of small molecule drug discovery. Students analyze physicochemical, structural, and (fictional) assay data and use these to design new compounds for testing. Simulated assay results are returned to students who use the information in the design of subsequent compounds. After workshop 5, each team selects a single lead compound, supported by a potential synthetic route, a portfolio of assay data, and logical scientific decision-making. Our exercise provides students with opportunities for hands-on student-responsive data handing, team-building, and technical knowledge acquisition─all within an industrially relevant scientific scenario.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	3320–3332
Number of pages	13
Journal	Journal of Chemical Education
Volume	100
Issue number	9
Early online date	1 Aug 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.3c00066
Publication status	Published - 12 Sept 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding: The work in this paper was funded by the University of Bath and a CC-BY license is applied to the version of record arising from this submission.

Funding

We are grateful to James Taylor and Steven Bull (Department of Chemistry), for their prior development of a simpler exercise used with final year chemistry undergraduates at University of Bath. We are also grateful to Begoña Delgado-Charro and Nikoletta Fotaki (School of Pharmacy, Department of Life Sciences) for discussions and for access to their lecture material on ADME and DMPK, and to Patrick Taylor (Department of Chemistry) for the Jupyter notebook. We are particularly grateful to the Efficacious Four (Grace V, Adam H, Siqi W, Maria P) for permission to include their work as examples of student compound progression, to Siqi W for the basis of Supporting Information file S3 , and to Adam H for granting us permission to include his project report as Supporting Information file S4 . This exercise is part of several related Drug Discovery teaching projects at University of Bath and materials are available at https://doi.org/10.25416/NTR.c.6388596 . Version controlled updates for this project are available at https://doi.org/10.25416/NTR.21908502 . The work in this paper was funded by the University of Bath and a CC-BY license is applied to the version of record arising from this submission.

Keywords

Biochemistry
Decision Making
Drug Discovery
Drugs
Graduate Education/Research
Hands-On Learning
Interdisciplinary
Organic Chemistry
Pharmaceuticals
Problem Solving
Upper-Division Undergraduate

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Chemistry
Education

Access to Document

10.1021/acs.jchemed.3c00066Licence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "A Multidisciplinary Team-Based Classroom Exercise for Small Molecule Drug Discovery",

abstract = "Industrial drug discovery teams encompass scientists from multiple specialties and require participants to communicate effectively across disciplinary boundaries. In this paper, we present an undergraduate or graduate classroom simulation of this environment. Over a series of five workshops, student teams of mixed scientific backgrounds perform five iterations of the chemistry cycle of small molecule drug discovery. Students analyze physicochemical, structural, and (fictional) assay data and use these to design new compounds for testing. Simulated assay results are returned to students who use the information in the design of subsequent compounds. After workshop 5, each team selects a single lead compound, supported by a potential synthetic route, a portfolio of assay data, and logical scientific decision-making. Our exercise provides students with opportunities for hands-on student-responsive data handing, team-building, and technical knowledge acquisition─all within an industrially relevant scientific scenario.",

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