Drug Discovery and Design Flashcards
what is a drug?
a medicine or substance which has physiological effect when introduced to the body
what are six ways of finding new drugs?
screening compound libraries, serendipity, improving current drugs, farmining existing knowledge, targeted drug design, redeployment of exisiting drugs
what are the two categories to investigate when designing a new drug?
interaction and output
what is ethnopharmacology?
use of traditional remedies such as herbal treatments etc
why would peptides make good drugs?
functional endogenous signalling
protein based are well tolerated
why would peptides be bad drugs?
hard to administer
immunogenic
expensive
what is leptin?
an anti-obesity hormone but also keeps neurons alive
how do we design new drugs, such as leptin?
step 1: find chemic and synthesise lots of synthetic peptides
step 2: cyclization (linear peptide to cycle)
step 3: sequence modification: natural and unnatural peptides
