Pharmaceuticals

Chemistry is at the heart of all bodily processes. Understanding these processes and how they work is crucial for finding solutions to medical problems. Even something as minor as heartburn can be broken down into acid-base chemistry. When you take Tums, the active ingredient is calcium carbonate (CaCO3), which can neutralizer the overproduced stomach acids and protect the lining of the esophagus from damage. Pharmaceutical drugs rely on knowledge of chemical processes and biological pathways in order to produce the desired effect. Usually, there are many processes happening at once and sometimes drugs have other, undesired side effects along with the desired ones. Trying to minimize secondary effects plays a major part in designing pharmaceutical drugs, and often can become a big problem when trying to get a drug into production. It is hard to minimize other effects often because the unwanted effects could be happening due to a multitude of reasons. This is why getting a drug to be approved for human consumption and mass-produced can be a very long process.