Drug Discovery Flashcards
3 steps of drug discovery.
Discovery: search for a lead in natural plants, rational design, and high-throughput screening.
Development: Optimize the drug. Final drug changes from original drug. Eficacy and safety testing is done here. Use animals. 60 mil a year. The drug is then formulated (filers, flavour, stabilizers, absorbers, preservatives).
Clinical Trials: Phase 1: 100 participants, mainly testing safety.
Phase 2: 100-300 participants, testing for both eficacy and safety.
Phase 3: 1000s of participants, testing for rare side effects.
Used the double blind study, so patients and doctors don’t know who has placebo.
What is AZT?
An AIDS drug that works by terminating the production of DNA chains.
What is the Nuremberg code?
Consent, animal studies, qualified scientists, no suffering
Patent protection on drugs.
Lasts 20 years in order for company to recoup research costs.
Drug companies and marketing.
Spend 16% of budget on marketing. Spend 60% of budget on doctors. They spend 50 k per doctor.
