Currently, 6 faculty and over 40 graduate students and post-doctoral associates comprise the Department of Medicinal Chemistry.  Research projects involve synthesis, rational drug design, molecular modeling and computational chemistry, enzymology, isolation of new drug targets, lead optimization, combinatorial and parallel synthesis, purification and analysis, biotechnology, and opioid research. Therapeutic emphasis areas include: emerging infectious diseases, malaria, cancer chemotherapy, diseases of the CNS, and prevention and treatment of drug abuse.