Department of Pharmaceutics

       Pharmaceutics is the discipline of pharmacy that deals with the process of turning a new chemical entity (NCE) or old drugs into a medication to be used safely and effectively by patients. It is also called the science of dosage form design. There are many chemicals with pharmacological properties, but need special measures to help them achieve therapeutically relevant amounts at their sites of action. Pharmaceutics helps relate the formulation of drugs to their delivery and disposition in the body. Pharmaceutics deals with the formulation of a pure drug substance into a dosage form. Branches of pharmaceutics include:

• Pharmaceutical formulation

• Pharmaceutical manufacturing

• Dispensing pharmacy

• Pharmaceutical technology

• Physical pharmacy

• Pharmaceutical jurisprudence

• NDDS

Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry

       Pharmaceutical chemistry are disciplines of pharmacy at the intersection of chemistry, especially synthetic organic chemistry, and pharmacology and various other biological specialties, where they are involved with design, chemical synthesis and development for market of pharmaceutical agents, or bio-active molecules (drugs). Compounds used as medicines are most often organic compounds, which are often divided into the broad classes of small organic molecules (e.g., atorvastatin, fluticasone, clopidogrel) and "biologics" (infliximab, erythropoietin, insulin glargine), the latter of which are most often medicinal preparations of proteins (natural and recombinant antibodies, hormones, etc.). Inorganic and organometallic compounds are also useful as drugs (e.g., lithium and platinum-based agents such as lithium carbonate and cisplatin as well as gallium).

       In particular, medicinal chemistry in its most common practice—focusing on small organic molecules—encompasses synthetic organic chemistry and aspects of natural products and computational chemistry in close combination with chemical biology, enzymology and structural biology, together aiming at the discovery and development of new therapeutic agents.

Department of Pharmacology

       Pharmacology is a branch of medicine and pharmaceutical sciences which is concerned with the study of drug or medication action, where a drug can be broadly or narrowly defined as any man-made, natural, or endogenous (from within the body) molecule which exerts a biochemical or physiological effect on the cell, tissue, organ, or organism (sometimes the word pharmacon is used as a term to encompass these endogenous and exogenous bioactive species). More specifically, it is the study of the interactions that occur between a living organism and chemicals that affect normal or abnormal biochemical function.

       The two main areas of pharmacology are pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics. Pharmacodynamics studies the effects of a drug on biological systems, and pharmacokinetics studies the effects of biological systems on a drug. In broad terms, pharmacodynamics discusses the chemicals with biological receptors, and pharmacokinetics discusses the absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) of chemicals from the biological systems.

Department of Pharmacognosy

       Pharmacognosy is the branch of pharmacy that studies plants or other natural sources as a possible source of drugs. The American Society of Pharmacognosy defines pharmacognosy as "the study of the physical, chemical, biochemical, and biological properties of drugs, drug substances, or potential drugs or drug substances of natural origin as well as the search for new drugs from natural sources".

       The word "pharmacognosy" is derived from two Greek words: pharmakon (drug), and gnosis (knowledge) or the Latin verb cognosco (con, 'with', and gnōscō, 'know'; itself a cognate of the Greek verb, meaning 'I know, perceive'),meaning 'to conceptualize' or 'to recognize'.