Coursera

Drug Discovery (Coursera)

Offered by University of California, San Diego,

The University of California San Diego, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Drug Discovery course brings you lectures from both faculty and industry experts. With this course, recorded on campus at UCSD, we seek to share our access to top people in the field who bring an unprecedented range of expertise on drug discovery. In this course you will learn the drug discovery process up to the filing of an Initial New Drug Application or IND. Each week you will learn the steps that a pharmaceutical or biotech company goes through to discover a new therapeutic drug.

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see Coursera's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

In this course you will be able to:

Understand the pharmaceutical and biotechnology market a changing landscape
Learn the major aspects of the drug discovery process, starting with target selection, to compound screening to designing lead candidates.
Recognize current modern drug discovery based on the lock-and-key theory, which attempts to use one single compound to hit one target to combat the related disease.
Increase understanding of the various drug discovery tools and methods that are used for finding, identifying and designing a new drug.
Define and understand the regulatory responsibilities for drug discovery to file an Investigational New Drug Application (IND).

Course 1 of 3 in the Drug Development Product Management Specialization
This course is intended as part 1 of a series: Drug Discovery, Drug Development and Drug Commercialization . We would highly recommend that you take the courses in order since it will give you a better understanding on how a drug is discovered in the lab before being tested in clinical trials and then launched in the market place.

Syllabus

WEEK 1
Welcome!
Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Industry Landscape
In this module course lead Dr. Williams Ettouati begins by giving a landscape overview of the Pharma and Biotechnology landscape.

WEEK 2
Drug Discovery: Proteomics, Genomics
This week we will be hearing from Phillip Bourne, PhD. Dr. Bourne was, at the time of this recording, the Associate Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Industrial Alliances in the UCSD Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Since that time, he has been named the first Associate Director for Data Science at the United States National Institutes of Health.
Compound Selection & Preclinical Studies
This week we will hear from Ronald Christopher, Ph.D. Dr. Ronald Christopher, Vice President of Preclinical Trials at Arena Pharmaceuticals.

WEEK 3
Challenges in Fragment Based Drug Discovery for Protein Kinases
In this module we will hear from Stephen Burley, M.D., Ph.D. At the time of this recording, Director of the Center for Integrative Proteomics at Rutgers University. He is now the Director of the Protein Data Bank and remains an Adjunct Professor at the UCSD Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.
Key Concepts in Drug Delivery
This module we hear from Professor of Clinical Pharmacy and Pediatrics, Brookie Best, Pharm. D., of UCSD's Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Go to Class

MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

Coursera

Johns Hopkins University

Health Information Technology Fundamentals (Coursera)

Health & Society

In this course you will receive an overview of the health IT ecosystem and the types of technologies IT support staff interact with the most. You will be introduced to the role of electronic health records (EHRs), clinical decision support, telemedicine, patient portals, and medical devices. We’ll cover common examples of how disruptions in these technologies can impact ongoing operations and routine clinical workflow. Although there is an interconnectedness to some aspects of healthcare, there are also limitations in data sharing. We want you to walk away from this course with an understanding of the family of technologies and tools that are critical in healthcare operations.

Jul 6th 2026

4 Weeks

Health Healthcare Databases

Coursera

University of Minnesota

Healthcare Marketplace (Coursera)

Management & Leadership Economics & Finance

In this course in the Healthcare Marketplace specialization you will identify, define, and describe potential business and public policy solutions to the challenges facing society’s growing demand for health services. Students will master a body of knowledge on the health care sectors major components through reading and reflection.

Jun 29th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Healthcare Healthcare Marketplace Health Services

Coursera

Columbia University

HI-FIVE: Health Informatics For Innovation, Value & Enrichment (Administrative/IT Perspective) (Coursera)

Health & Society Medicine & Pharmacology

HI-FIVE (Health Informatics For Innovation, Value & Enrichment) Training is an approximately 10-hour online course designed by Columbia University in 2016, with sponsorship from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). The training is role-based and uses case scenarios. No additional hardware or software are required for this course. Our nation’s healthcare system is changing at a rapid pace.

Jul 6th 2026

4 Weeks

Health Innovation Healthcare

Coursera

Johns Hopkins University

Opioid Epidemic: From Evidence to Impact (Coursera)

Health & Society

While prescription opioids serve an invaluable role for the treatment of cancer pain and pain at the end of life, their overuse for acute and chronic non-cancer pain as well as the increasing availability of heroin and illicit fentanyl, have contributed to the highest rates of overdose and opioid addiction in U.S. history. Evidence-informed solutions are urgently needed to address these issues and to promote high-quality care for those with pain. This course and the report it is based on are a response to that need. They offer timely information and a path forward for all who are committed to addressing injuries and deaths associated with opioids in the United States.

Jun 29th 2026

4 Weeks

Health Pharmacology Pharmacy

Coursera

George Washington University

Leading Healthcare Quality and Safety (Coursera)

Health & Society Medicine & Pharmacology

Ensuring patient safety and healthcare quality is critical and should be a key focus of everyone in healthcare practice. This course provides healthcare practitioners and others with an introduction to the knowledge and skills needed to lead patient safety and quality improvement initiatives at the micro and macro levels. Participants will explore the foundations of health care quality and the science underlying patient safety and quality improvement, design and select effective health care measures, analyze patient safety problems and processes using tools such as human factors analysis, apply systematic approaches including the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) model to address quality improvement challenges, and learn strategies to lead a culture of change

Jul 6th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Health Healthcare Measurement

Coursera

University of Houston

Value-Based Care: Managing Processes to Improve Outcomes (Coursera)

Health & Society

This course is designed to introduce you to critical office-based processes that a value-based practice must manage in the drive towards improved patient outcomes. In Module 2, we’ll focus on office-based and clinical patient-based supporting functions. At every level in healthcare, guidelines, processes, and functions exist to improve outcomes, and following a consistent process will return the best effect. Refine your understanding of value and learn strategies to provide real assistance to patients to manage chronic diseases and navigate the complex healthcare system. Gain an overview of panel management, a systematic, proactive approach to identify and address unmet chronic and preventive care needs of patients that leads to better health outcomes. Learn how clinical patient-based questions related to immunizations, cancer screenings, or diabetes care can generate data to support a strategy of identifying non-utilization patterns.

Jul 6th 2026

3 Weeks

Healthcare Clinical Patient

Coursera

Johns Hopkins University

Setting the Stage for Success: An Eye on Safety Culture and Teamwork (Patient Safety II) (Coursera)

Health & Society Medicine & Pharmacology

Safety culture is a facet of organizational culture that captures attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and values about safety. A culture of safety is essential in high reliability organizations and is a critical mechanism for the delivery of safe and high-quality care. It requires a strong commitment from leadership and staff. In this course, a safe culture is promoted through the use of identifying and reporting patient safety hazards, accountability and transparency, involvement with patients and families, and effective teamwork.

Jun 29th 2026

4 Weeks

Health Healthcare Quality

Coursera

University of California, San Diego

Drug Development (Coursera)

Medicine & Pharmacology

The University of California San Diego, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Drug Development course brings you lectures from both faculty and industry experts. With this course, recorded on campus at UCSD, we seek to share our access to top people in the field who bring an unprecedented range of expertise on drug development. In this course you will learn the different stages of clinical development as well as the regulatory including but not limited to, an Investigational New Drug Application (IND), New Drug Application (NDA), and product labeling.

Jul 6th 2026

3 Weeks

Biotechnology Pharmaceutical FDA

Coursera

Johns Hopkins University

Measuring the Success of a Patient Safety or Quality Improvement Project (Patient Safety VI) (Coursera)

Health & Society Medicine & Pharmacology

How will you know if your patient safety and quality project is meeting its objectives? Peter Drucker once said “What gets measured, gets managed.” In this course, students will learn why measurement is critical to quality improvement work. Equally important, they will learn which data sources provide the most meaningful information and tools for how and where to locate them. Finally, students will learn how to interpret data from their patient safety and quality projects to guide and modify them during implementation to maximize their chances of making a difference for patients.

Jun 29th 2026

4 Weeks

Health Healthcare Patient

Coursera

University of Colorado System

Newborn Capstone (Coursera)

Health & Society

Congratulations! You progressed your way through all four of the Newborn Baby Care courses, each with their own focal points on the many dimensions of maintaining newborn health in the first month of life. Now we arrive at a crucial part of your learning –the Newborn Baby Care Capstone- Case Studies, which is your opportunity to take what you have learned and synthesize, integrate, and apply what you know to a series of case studies. Interacting with these real-life scenarios will help you retain the specialization content and be ready to put it into practice in your own care-providing environment. Together we will experience key moments of the courses, this time through the lens of case studies.

Jul 6th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Healthcare Child Health Babies

Coursera

MedCerts

Pharmacy Dosages and Prescriptions Essentials (Coursera)

Health & Society

In the Pharmacy Dosages and Prescriptions Essentials course, students will learn the language of medicine, using pharmacy nomenclature and the skills necessary to measure different types of prescriptions through four lessons. This includes understanding the dosage calculation methods, mathematical conversions, and formulas most commonly used within the pharmacy.

Jul 6th 2026

4 Weeks

Medicine Medication Pharmacology

Coursera

Johns Hopkins University

Planning a Patient Safety or Quality Improvement Project (Patient Safety III) (Coursera)

Health & Society Medicine & Pharmacology

This course provides students with a set of tools and methodologies to plan and initiate a Problem Solving or Quality Improvement project. The first module presents methods for selecting, scoping and structuring a project before it is even initiated. It also introduces the project classifications of implementation and discovery. The second module describes the A3 problem solving methodology and the tool itself. Further in that same module, the student is shown tools to identify problems in flow, defects, and waste and to discover causes, brainstorm, and prioritize interventions. Module 3 shows a methodology within the implementation class. These methods are designed to overcome emotional and organizational barriers to translating evidence-based interventions into practice. The fourth and last module looks at one more way to approach improvement projects in the discovery class. These tools are specifically for new, out-of-the-box design thinking.

Jun 29th 2026

4 Weeks

Health Healthcare Project Management