Why Is Milk White?: & 200 Other Curious Chemistry Questions (2013)
9. Chemists
How do you use chemistry in a pharmacy?
Pharmacies deal with medicines, and most medical compounds are small organic molecules, such as aspirin or ethanol, or larger biological molecules, mostly proteins like insulin or prolactin. So a pharmacist is doing a fair bit of chemistry, in addition to biology, medicine, and retail sales.
Pharmacists are not just concerned with how their chemicals affect the body of the patient, but they are also concerned with how the molecules interact with one another, how they affect the body in combination, and how they are delivered. To make a pill that survives the stomach acid and is delivered into the intestines can be complicated.
Some drugs must be injected or delivered through the skin in some other way, because they can’t pass through the digestive tract unaltered. Most proteins are in this category. Some are inhaled for the same reason or because they act faster that way. Knowing how chemistry affects drug delivery is an important part of designing pills, capsules, injectables, and inhalants.