Medicinal Chemistry: An Introduction

This textbook by Thomas is a very big disappointment to me. I am still trying to see how so little useful information can be spread over a vast 620 pages. The subtitle "An introduction" is one thing, but for the author to spend so much time discussing background without giving precise information about how the molecules act as drugs is unfortunate. In so many areas, it is just a waste of the students' time. It has poor illustrations too. The book is inexpensive, but I would rather pay more for a book that I could actually learn some interesting information about. If you wish to learn medicinal chemistry, you need a better book than this. This book give almost no insight in the strategies that a medicinal chemist actually uses to design drugs. Fortunately, there are some very good books out there today. My three favorite MedChem books are those written by: Patrick, Silverman, and Sneader....in that order. Nogrady is also a good book but it suffers from the opposite extreme that this book by Thomas does (it has too many specifics and not enough background).

As an undergraduate text for medicinal chemistry, I think this book is the best in the market. It's appropriate for students who have only had two semesters of organic chemistry. The layout is logical. Aside from chapter 7 (chelating agents), the first nine chapters are at least decent and mostly very good. Chapter 10 (nucleic acids) and 11 (nitric oxide) probably belong more in a biochem text than a med chem book. Chapter 12 (organic synthesis) is well out of the scope of this book and falls flat.

The book has a huge number of errors. Most of which are in the chemical figures and will not bother anyone unless they like looking at structures. Some of the errors involve the mathematic equations and could cause trouble for a student who isn't paying attention.

The only major complaint I have about the book is that chapter 5 (pharmacokinetics) is almost completely devoid of units on the variables in the equations and graphs. Proper use of units would greatly help a student in learning material in this chapter.

While not perfect, this book is very good for a junior/senior upper-level chemistry course.

Accompanied by elaborated worked examples, as well as self-assessment questions, the components of this book are complete. It introduces its reader to the underlying principles of drugs discovery and development, using the simplest possible method. Each one of its illustrated chapters included content-summary at the end of that chapter.
From pharmaceutical chemistry to pharmacological kinetics, the introductory scope of this book is unique. Sound narrations regarding methods of Drug Discovery, Combinatorial Synthesis, Drug Action, Receptor Structure and Signal Transduction, as well as many others, gave this book a top niche in my scale of text preferences.
Its price is reasonable, and its pages are overflowing with pieces of hard-to-beat information. I will not hesitate to recommend this book for pharmacy students; and for any other person who takes introductory pharmacology course. It is very sound.