The pharmaceutical sciences are a group of interdisciplinary areas of study involved with the design, action, delivery, disposition, and use of drugs. This field draws on many areas of the basic and applied sciences, such as chemistry (organic, inorganic, physical, biochemical and analytical), biology (anatomy and physiology, biochemistry, cell biology, and molecular biology), epidemiology, statistics, chemometrics, mathematics, physics, and chemical engineering, and applies their principles to the study of drugs.
The pharmaceutical sciences are further subdivided into several specific specialties, with four main branches:
As new discoveries advance and extend the pharmaceutical sciences, subspecialties continue to be added to this list. Importantly, as knowledge advances, boundaries between these specialty areas of pharmaceutical sciences are beginning to blur. Many fundamental concepts are common to all pharmaceutical sciences. These shared fundamental concepts further the understanding of their applicability to all aspects of pharmaceutical research and drug therapy.