Pharmacology extra-credit assignment
Due: Dec 16, 2019 (11:59 p.m. on Turnitin)
This semester we’ve learned about many important aspects of preclinical and clinical drug development. There are many
companies—including in the greater Philadelphia/South Jersey region—that work as Contract Research Organizations
(CROs), providing outsourced technical support for these efforts. Giant multinational pharmaceutical companies,
medium-sized biotechnology firms, and small academic labs use CROs because it allows for critical specialized work to
be done without requiring in-house expertise and equipment.
Some CROs specialize in more chemistry-focused work, including extraction and analysis of chemicals from natural
products, synthesis of structural analogues, and characterization of compound physiochemical properties. Other CROs
specialize in biological applications, which may include cellular reporter assays and drug screening, in vitro and in vivo
toxicity testing, and behavioral testing. Finally, some CROs specialize in running clinical trials.
One major CRO, Sekisui XenoTech, provides a number of pharmacological services, including in vitro drug metabolism
assays and in vivo ADME investigations. Sekisui XenoTech also, conveniently, produces a number of publicly available
webinars on technologies relevant to what we’ve learned in class. These are available here:
https://www.xenotech.com/scientific-resources/webinar-series
For this extra-credit assignment, choose one of the many webinars in the link above, watch it, and write a report on what
you learned. Using 12-point Times New Roman font with 1-inch margins and 1.15 line spacing, your report should be
approximately 3 pages in length and should address most or all of the following questions—as many as are relevant to the
topic chosen:
 What is/are the major pharmacology question(s) being addressed in the webinar?
 Why is/are the topic(s) important?
 What are key technologies used to address the webinar topics?
 How does this topic relate to discussions we’ve had in CHEM 07490/07590?
 What are major questions/concerns remaining in this particular subfield that future research may address?
 Was there anything you learned from the webinar that was somewhat surprising? Why was it surprising?
 Was there anything you learned from the webinar that you wish we had covered in more detail in the course? If
so, where would you include it and how would it help with further understanding of the course material?
This report will be submitted on Turnitin. The report will be graded on the clarity of your writing in response to the
questions posed above and how well you relate the topic(s) to what we’ve covered in class. Be sure to properly cite your
sources through the document; bringing in outside sources to inform your writing and add to the discussion is strongly
encouraged. Please include your works cited as an additional page at the end of the document (sorry, this doesn’t count
towards the ~3-page expectation). Based on the overall quality of the extra credit submission, I will consider adding the
following point s to the exam portion of your course grade:
 “A”-level = 8-10 points (equivalent to a grade-level boost on an exam!)
 “B”-level = 5-7 points
 “C”-level = 2-4 points
 “D”-level = 1 point