Drug Discovery Final Flashcards
What makes bacteria different than us?
Prokaryotic
Plasmid DNA
What are Koch’s postulates? What’s it for?
The bacteria must be present in every case of the disease.
The bacteria must be isolated from the host with the disease and grown in pure culture.
The specific disease must be reproduced when a pure culture of the bacteria is inoculated into a healthy susceptible host.
The bacteria must be recoverable from the experimentally infected host.
Useful for determining whether a given bacteria is the cause of a given disease.
What is chemotherapy?
A chemical directly interferes with the proliferation of microorganisms (or cancerous cells or whatever) at concentrations tolerated by the host.
What’s selective toxicity?
That a chemical shows greater toxicity to the microbial cells than to host cells.
What does bacteriostatic mean?
inhibit cell growth, requires immune system to kill pathogens
What does bactericidal mean?
Mechanism of action actively kills bacterial cells
What does narrow-spectrum mean?
will target specific types or species of bacteria
What does broad-spectrum mean?
Can target a broad range of bacteria
What is a pro-drug?
A compound which is inactive until converted by the body into an active drug.
How do beta-lactams work?
They disrupt cell wall biosynthesis by mimicking the D-ala D-ala for the end of peptide chains, and inhibit the substrate for transpeptidases which link them.
Irreversible inhibition.
WHY do Beta-lactam antibiotics work?
They have the beta-lactam ring which makes them effective… (idk what else boi)
What do sulphonamides target?
Pyrimidine synthesis.
How do sulphonamides work?
They inhibit the synthesis of a coenzyme for pyrimidine synthesizing enzymes.
What kind of inhibition do sulphonamides use?
Competitive, reversible inhibition.
What are the three functions of antibodies?
Neutralization, complement recruitment, and opsonization.
