The Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry investigates how to make compounds used as drugs more effective and less toxic while striving to discover new drugs. It aims to synthesize new drugs through rational approaches based on structure-activity relationships rather than random discovery.

Other areas of study in pharmaceutical chemistry include the structural identification of drugs using spectral methods, investigating the relationship between chemical structures and biological effects, elucidating molecular mechanisms of action, and conducting in vitro and in vivo studies to understand the metabolic changes drugs undergo in biological systems.

A pharmaceutical chemist requires knowledge of organic chemistry for the synthesis, structural elucidation, and analysis of drugs, as well as expertise in biochemistry, pharmacology, and molecular biology to develop new molecules with enhanced efficacy and minimized side effects and toxicity.