The pharmaceutical sciences combine a broad range of scientific disciplines that are critical to the discovery and development of new drugs and therapies.
Pharmaceutical sciences can be broadly classified into the following main categories, with many specialized fields within each category:
Analytical techniques, quality control and quality assurance.
Research, development and commercialization of biotechnology-based pharmaceuticals, including proteins, genes and other biologically-based products.
The clinical research dimension within the pharmaceutical sciences, focused on the therapeutic benefits and clinical assessment of drugs and biologicals.
Medicinal, natural products, molecular and structural chemistry and drug design and discovery.
Formulation design, research and development a multidisciplinary field drawing upon the physical, chemical, biological and engineering sciences.
Focuses on drug absorption, nanotechnology, and drug delivery systems design and performance including targeted drug delivery.
Evaluation of absorption, tissue distribution, metabolism, membrane transport and elimination of drugs and the effect of these processes on drug efficacy. Quantitative computational evaluation of the drug pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. This includes both the reflection of deterministic/mechanistic aspects using quantitative systems pharmacology and PBPK approaches to describe these processes, as well as key pharmacostatistical frameworks for evaluating responses in populations, including nonlinear mixed effects and Bayesian approaches to PK/PD modeling.
The strategic compilation and evaluation of multidisciplinary information on product performance as it pertains to safety, efficacy, and quality.
