Biochemical Pharmacology - Fall 2008 (Chem 430 / Chem 731 / Chem 7310)


The final exams have been marked and all marks are available. The average of the final exam was 75%; somewhat lower than the midterm exam (80%). Still, one in three people did better in the final than in the midterm. You may also have a look at the expected answers.

I hope that you found this course at least somewhat useful. I enjoyed teaching it and thank everyone for their interest. Happy holidays and best wishes for your new year! Michael Palmer


The final version of the "new" course notes is also online. Unfortunatly I could not manage to bring all chapters up to snuff. For the missing ones, please refer to the old notes.


Chem 430: To help you with your exam preparation, here is an old exam, and a list of topics and of individual drugs that I suggest you to know about. You will not be required to name individual drugs not contained in that shortlist. However, you wil still be asked questions that go beyond simply regurgitating facts from the shortlist, so please take the time to understand the principles; do not just cram isolated facts.


Chem 731: Your take-home exam is available. Please submit by Friday, December 5th. Please submit electronically.


Papers for presentation / graduate students

The schedule is now complete. Since we will have three presentations on each of the two dates, I hope that you can keep the duration of your presentation to 15-20 minutes. Undergraduate students, please read the papers ahead of time, so that you can follow better and participate in the discussion. Likewise, I would ask the graduate students to read each other's papers as well.

When you prepare your presentation, please consider the following points:

  1. Content: Please spend some time to explain some of the background of your paper, and also try to relate it to the content of the lectures if possible.
  2. Please try to explain the underlying principles of the key experiments. Why you do so, remember that a picture is worth a thousand words - or, in PowerPoint, a hundred thousand bullets.
  3. If you cite papers related to your's that are not straight from the reference list of your own paper, please give full citations.

If you have a lengthy paper, focus on its most important points, don't just run it straight through. Please have your presentation prepared and show it to me 1-2 days ahead of the actual date of delivery in class. If you have trouble understanding something, don't be shy to ask, I'll try to help you.

Paper Student Presentation date
H2S as a physiologic vasorelaxant: hypertension in mice with deletion of cystathionine gamma-lyase. Science 322:587-90 (2008). Yanwei Zhan November 25
Antinociception produced by 14,15-epoxyeicosatrienoic acid is mediated by the activation of beta-endorphin and met-enkephalin in the rat ventrolateral periaqueductal gray. J Pharmacol Exp Ther 326:614-22 (2008). Jason Da Costa November 25
Epoxyeicosatrienoic Acids Function as Selective, Endogenous Antagonists of Native Thromboxane Receptors: Identification of a Novel Mechanism of Vasodilation. JPET epub ahead of print (2008) Erica Murray November 25
A heterodimer-selective agonist shows in vivo relevance of G protein-coupled receptor dimers. PNAS 102:9050-9055 (2005) Aron Broom November 27
Artemisinins target the SERCA of Plasmodium falciparum. Nature 424:957-61 (2003). Chau-Minh Phan November 27
Inhibition of P-Glycoprotein-Mediated Taxol Resistance by Reversibly-Linked Quinine Homodimers. Mol. Pharmacol. epub ahead of print. (2008) Sarah Sullivan November 27

Topics

The topics are as listed in the on-line course notes.


Reading materials

Lecture slides

Printable course notes. Note that they are different from previous editions. I will be make them available incrementally. With each installment, I will include the preceding chapters over again, so that the page numbering remains consistent.

November 18th: I have posted the chapter on anti-microbial chemotherapy, but I'm STILL labouring on the chapter on eicosanoids. My hair will turn gray before I finish it.

Please report any errors you find in the notes. Refer to page and line numbers to locate the errors. Thanks!

Update: As you noticed, I have fallen behind with updating the chapters. As a stopgap, here are the old versions of the chapters missing so far. Coverage for the midterm ends with the last chapter of this file (lots of stuff, isn't it).


Evaluation

This will be separate for the undergraduate and graduate students participating in this class.

Undergraduate version (Chem 430)

Graduate version (Chem 731 / 7310)