Book Reviews

Drug Discovery and Development, Vol. 1: Drug DiscoveryM. S. Chorgade (Ed.), Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, 2006, 456 pp.,ISBN 978-0-471-39848-6.

Drug Discovery and Development, edited by M.S.Chorghade, is a two volume set, the first of which is nowavailable. Volume 1, Drug Discovery, is composed of 16chapters by authors who are active in the field of medici-nal chemistry and are able to bring historical perspectiveto this important field of chemistry. Chapter 2 ‘‘MedicinalChemistry in the New Millenium: A Glance into theFuture’’ by Paul Erhardt is a long chapter that places theother chapters into context and gives the reader numer-ous examples of drug development that help to makethe important teaching points of this book clear andmeaningful. This is not a textbook, however, and is notdesigned to teach the synthetic organic chemistry andphysical organic chemistry that underpin medicinalchemistry. Nevertheless, there are numerous sections onsynthetic chemistry as applied to drug development,especially in some of the later chapters that are devotedto development of specific drugs.

Undergraduate students and graduate students canlearn much from this well-written collection of articles,especially if the book is used as a reference source in aseminar course designed to introduce the field of medici-nal chemistry. This would be especially the case inDepartments of Chemistry that traditionally do not offercourses in medicinal chemistry. The ever-changing fieldof medicinal chemistry is impacted by many other disci-plined and emerging technologies, such that graduatingundergraduates from traditional chemistry programs maynot appreciate the challenges of modern medicinalchemistry and where this field will likely change in thefuture. This volume can help students to bridge this gapin their understanding of chemistry.

Robert H. GlewDepartment of Biochemistry

and Molecular BiologyUniversity of New Mexico

School of MedicineAlbuquerque, NM 87131

E-mail: rglew@salud.unm.edu

DOI 10.1002/bambed.38 This paper is available on line at http://www.bambed.org162

Q 2007 by The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology BIOCHEMISTRY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY EDUCATION

Vol. 35, No. 2, p. 162, 2007