Pre-Pharmacy Student, looking for pharmacy research topic for a paper

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Hey I'm a pre-pharmacy student who is taking a chem-seminar class where we have to do a research paper/presentation. I'm a biochem major, and I want to do something pharmacy related but am having trouble coming up with a topic. I was going to talk about anti-histamines and secondary anti-histamines and how they are different with side-effects, effectiveness, etc., but my teacher said that topic doesn't have enough future research. He wants something that is developing, something that I can talk about where the research will lead in the future, and what are other applications etc. So, since I don't have a bunch of experience/knowledge yet, is there anything one of you pharmacy students has heard about/researched that would be a good topic to do? The paper is supposed to be 7-10 pages and a 15 min presentation, so something somewhat specific but also broad enough to have plenty of info and sources. Thanks for your help!

Antibiotics.

Just read some news clippings, man. There is a ton of stuff going on in the pharmacy world.

Or google "hot topics in pharmacy"

If there is one thing you need to learn prior to getting into pharm school, it is to be PROACTIVE and SELF-SUFFICIENT. Hell, you could probably use the search function and find some threads on this here forum about "hot button" topics and new research/drugs.

One of the topics I always found interesting was anticoagulation. I'm not a pharmacy student *yet* but it's something I've learned a little bit about. There are different medicines that work differently on the blood such as lovenox, plavix, and coumadin. They all have different mechanisms of action that affect the blood in the body. And then recently pradaxa gained some attention as possibly a replacement for coumadin. If you want to get spiffy with it you can look at the chemistry, mechanisms of action, and then some of the business aspects of these medicines.

Plavix used to have a generic but now it doesn't.
Coumadin has had a generic for years
Lovenox just recently got a generic, like this year I believe
Pradaxa is brand only at this time meaning it has to be worth the extra money to replace coumadin; you can also look at the feasibility of it being used more when it becomes a generic years from now.

It's not necessarily a "hot topic" but anticoagulation is important enough that there are clinics for it run by doctors and pharmacists. That might be enough to do so if you decide to get into pharmacy or even clinical it gets your feet wet and might look good on a resume if published in some kind of journal.

Since it is chemistry research you can do stuff like computational chemistry to get some of the information on trends in the compounds or going biochemically and how they affect enzymes or blood cells, etc. (I'm stabbing in the dark here a little bit because I haven't done that in-depth research yet.)

I also agree with antibiotics with the same aspect as anticoagulation since some antibiotics are about to hit generic soon like levaquin and looking at the mechanism of action for levaquin vs some of the other categories of antibiotics like penicillin or clindamycin. Although that is a little more broad-spectrum (pardon the pun) and would require some microbiology that you may or may not be familiar with (hopefully so as a biochem major.)

Basically a hot topic would be something that a lot of people have to use, either temporarily or permanently. Insulin development is something big as well, along with different kinds of blood pressure medicines or immunosuppressants (a lot of people have to switch them after a certain period of time, limiting side effects, etc.)

If you want to be funny you can always compare mechanism of action for a generic medicine and its new patent equivalent such as citalopram vs lexapro, treximet vs sumitriptan, provigil vs nuvigil, etc. Basically they are very similar and it would be interesting to see how different they are in structure and function. That might be interesting for alot of students to read since they keep hearing "newer is better" and it might elaborate on a few things for you as well.

I'm obviously procrastinating at doing my own cell biology project right now but here is a little food for thought as well. It doesn't have to be something at the forefront of pharmacy right now but doing something that is a mainstay in pharmacy or something pharmacists sometimes "gripe" about might be worth doing a little more investigation into. Plus, learning the mechanisms and etc. might help you out in that particular field when it comes time to learn it in pharmacy school.

Cheers!

If it needs to be more chem/biochem based...I would do MecA gene/MRSA.

Originally Posted by rxlea

Just read some news clippings, man. There is a ton of stuff going on in the pharmacy world.

Or google "hot topics in pharmacy"

If there is one thing you need to learn prior to getting into pharm school, it is to be PROACTIVE and SELF-SUFFICIENT. Hell, you could probably use the search function and find some threads on this here forum about "hot button" topics and new research/drugs.

Wow, well this woman, is self-sufficient. Try googling "hot topics in pharmacy" and see what comes up. I spent many hours trying to come up with a topic but was having trouble finding anything with real substance. I thought I would be pro-active and ask a student of pharmacy, thinking, hey, maybe one of the them learned something really interesting in one of their classes and they think it would be a good topic to do more research on, since obviously, this is what would be taught to them, and not so much to me, still being in undergrad. Since when is asking for advice not being proactive? Or I guess I could just sit around using google/wikipedia because everything online is so trustworthy these days. I'm not asking anyone to write my paper, just enlighten me on something interesting they've learned that I could further develop. Thanks to those that responded, the anti-coagulant idea seems like I could really far with it, and go in different directions, I'll focus in on that and see what I can find. Thanks for the help!

http://dmd.aspetjournals.org/content/early/recent

"pharmacy journals" => look for anything related to metabolism or physiology

Originally Posted by gobigred

Wow, well this woman, is self-sufficient. Try googling "hot topics in pharmacy" and see what comes up. I spent many hours trying to come up with a topic but was having trouble finding anything with real substance. I thought I would be pro-active and ask a student of pharmacy, thinking, hey, maybe one of the them learned something really interesting in one of their classes and they think it would be a good topic to do more research on, since obviously, this is what would be taught to them, and not so much to me, still being in undergrad. Since when is asking for advice not being proactive? Or I guess I could just sit around using google/wikipedia because everything online is so trustworthy these days. I'm not asking anyone to write my paper, just enlighten me on something interesting they've learned that I could further develop. Thanks to those that responded, the anti-coagulant idea seems like I could really far with it, and go in different directions, I'll focus in on that and see what I can find. Thanks for the help!

If you don't mind, PM me with the topic information and what you're trying to do with it after you get it figured out. I'd be intrigued to see what you came up with. Like I said, I'm a big fan of anticoag.

Big fan of anti-coag? God bless you.

Originally Posted by bullsfan1986

Big fan of anti-coag? God bless you.

Now this may be a silly question and all but is there an issue with liking anticoag? The biology behind it seems interesting... and there seems to be a lot more room for development on the subject.

If you're really in to biochem, the chemistry and development of drugs like warfarin (founded in Wisconsin, woot!) are pretty interesting. The ridiculous dosing schedules and C/I's for these drugs are the problem. Wait until you take therapeutics, you'll understand...

Not really sure what all your project entails, but if you're going the anticoag route, make sure to look up Dabigatran and Rivaroxaban.