Abstract

Pharmacology in Drug Discovery: Understanding Drug Response is designed for all students, recent graduates, and new researchers in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries who need to interpret change in physiology induced by a chemical substance. Physiological systems customize chemical signal input to their own needs; therefore the same drug can have different effects in different physiological systems. The field of pharmacology is unique in that it furnishes the tools to analyze these different behaviors and traces them to their root cause. This enables predictions of drug behavior to be made in all systems, an invaluable tool for drug discovery because almost all drugs are developed in test systems far removed from the therapeutic one. 
This valuable resource provides simple explanations of the ways in which biological systems use basic biochemical mechanisms to produce fine chemical control of physiology, allowing for more informed predictions of drug effects in all systems and forming the basis of the drug-discovery process. Chapters follow a logical progression on how to characterize the pharmacology of any given molecule, and include important terminology, chapter summaries, references, and review questions to aid the reader in understanding and retention of the material.

• Enables the reader to interpret drug dose-response data and make mechanistic inferences at the molecular level
• Bridges the gap between biochemistry and therapeutic medicine
• Chapters include key topics such as drug affinity and efficacy, enzymes as drug targets, in vivo pharmacology, safety pharmacology, and more

"…an excellent introductory text…rich on examples and case studies…Although, there are many books that cover these subjects in greater depth, few have been able to integrate knowledge across fields so well and concisely."--British Toxicology Society Newsletter Winter 2012, Issue 41