Most medicinal chemists working in the pharmaceutical industry are organic synthetic chemists with little or no background in medicinal chemistry. These chemists must acquire a good knowledge of medicinal chemistry during their first years in the pharmaceutical/drug discovery industry. This book aims to be their practical handbook - a complete guide to the drug discovery process. The book reviews practical aspects of Medicinal Chemistry, emphasising the daily problems met by the medicinal chemist when dealing with lead discovery/identification methodologies, with structure-activity relationship studies aimed to scale up potency and target selectivity, and when optimising pharmacokinetic and pharmaceutical properties by means of ultimate chemical modifications. This is the second edition of The Practice of Medicinal Chemistry, the first edition being published in February 1996. The new edition is thoroughly revised, with around 30% new material, and refocussed to reflect the recent developments in genomics, proteomics, high throughput screening of compounds and drug solubilisation. An effort has been made to remove the overlap that exists in the previous edition and four new chapters have been introduced.