Drug receptor theory Flashcards
what are the two types of drugs?
Small molecules and biologicals
what are receptors?
proteins who’s function it is to recognise and respond to endogenous chemical signals
what are drug targets? give two examples
macromolecules with which drugs interact with to produce their effects
- dna
- antibiotics react with macromolecules on bacterial coating
what are receptors identified and classified by?
structure, pharmacology and signalling
are drugs completely specific?
no, there are also off target effects.
what does malfunction or loss of receptors lead to?
disease
what are the 4 receptor families?
ligand gated ion channels
GPCR
kinase linked
nuclear receptors
what are two examples of an endogenous ligand?
neurotransmitters and hormones
are ionotropic or metatropic pathways faster?
ionotropic
does a ligand only activate one class of receptor?
no it can activate more than one class
what’s a kinase?
a phosphorylative enzyme
give two examples of kinase receptors?
growth factor receptors and insulin receptors
where are nuclear receptors usually found?
in the cytosol.
what makes nuclear receptors different to the others receptor families
no TMD
what is the proportion of receptors occupied by the drug dependant on?
the affinity of the drug for the receptor
what is the affinity?
the balance between forward and backward reactions
when measuring affinity can you tell wether a drug is an agonist or antagonist?
no
what does efficacy govern?
how well a drug can stabalise a receptor in it’s active conformation
what happens to receptors when agonists bind?
their structure is stabalised
what characteristics are wanted from a drug? what if this drug is an agonist?
want high specificity with a high affinity.
if it’s an agonist efficacy also needs to be very high.
what is occupacy? what does this allow us to calculate? how does this vary.
the proportion of receptors occupied will vary with drug conc.
allows us to calculate affinity.
varies between 0 where no drugs are present and 1 where all receptors are occupied.
if measuring occupancy can we just measure response?
no because response depends on efficacy too so a response independant of efficacy is needed
what technique is used to measure occupancy?
radioligand binding assays
what are the five steps when doing a radioligand binding assays
- prepare cells and tissue, all receptors have to be isolated. break up plasma with detergent and centrifuge.
- place on a filter
3.add the drug (radioligand) at lots of different cons and allow to find equilibrium. - remove all unbound ligand.
count radioactivity of all the bound ligands
what are the 4 problesm with using radioligand assays?
there’s non specific binding so isn’t possible to remove all unbound ligands
the radioligand might not be stable and might interfere with receptor structure
the tissue might not have been treated properly.
might be issues with how bound and unbound ligands are seperated
why must a ligand be biologocially active?
because it’s binding to recognition site is supposed to correlate with a pharmacological action
what must the purity of a ligand be like?
must be extremely pure chemically
how can the problem of degredation of the ligand be solved?
- free radical scavanger e.g ethanol can be add to the drug solution
- store at a low but not freezing temperature.
- avoid light by storing in dark bottles.
- incorportion of antioxidant such as ascorbic acid.
what must be done to label the ligand?
labelling the drug with radioacrivity must achieve very high specific activity to allow very low (“tracer”) concentrations.
what are the advantages of 3H?
the labelled product is indistinguishable from native compound.
high specificity activates can be obtained (>80Ci/mmol)
has a long half life of around 12.5 years.
what are the disadvantages of 3H?
specialised labs are required
labelling is expensive and difficult
what are the advantages of 125I?
if compund has aromatic hydroxy group e.g tyrosine residues in peptides can be incorporated at very specific activities (>2000 Ci/mmol)
- iodination easy in most labs and cheap
what are the disadvantages of 125I?
it’s more readily degraded
the biological activity of the ligand can be reduced
it has a short half life of 67 days.
how is the tissue selected for use with radioligands?
what can the tissue be?
selected to contain the receptors of interest.
isolated membranes, slices, synaptosomes, cultured cells or solubilized/purified receptors from the total brain or specific region.
what has to be preserved during the inclubation?
both the ligand and the binding site
what protein concentration is needed for the incubation?
need in range of 0.1 - 1mg membrane protein/ml with assay volumes 0.25-1 ml
why are additives used in incubation?
used to protect the tissue/ligand
what is the temperature like in incubation?
usually low room temperature to 0 degrees celcius.
how is the tissue and bound ligand from the free ligand in incubation media done?
usually done by filteration or centrifugation
what other techniques can be used for removing soluble binding ligands?
dialysis,column,chromatography,precipitation/adsorption
what’s the major problem with seperating the bound ligand from the free ligand?
the speed of seperation must be compatible with affinity of ligand for receptor.
the lower affinity (high kD) requires faster/more efficient seperation
how is the specific binding calculated from a graph?
total bound- nonspecific binding
why is a radioligand’s binding saturable?
because the total number of receptors in the tissue and the preparation is limited. so there will be a point where all sites will be labelled and the binding curve will plateau
what does the langmuir equation describe?
the langmuir equation describes the relationship between receptors occupancy, affinity and drug concentration
what does it mean when some drugs have sub type selectivity? what are occupancy data graphs like in this case?
that they can distinguish between different subtypes of receptor
there’s no overlap on occupancy data graphs due to it being a selective ligand
what are occupancy graphs like for drugs that don’t have sub type selectivity?
there’s overlapping data because the drug can bind to the subtypes equally well
what is the efficacy for agonists like?
it will always be greater than 0 as all agonists can stabalise receptors to issue a response.
can partial agonists issue a full response? what’s their efficacy like?
no they can never issue a full responce no matter now much is add. their efficacy is greater than 0 but is never 1
what is the efficacy of an antagonist?
no matter how much is add it has an efficacy of 0 and never produces a response.
what is the efficacy of an inverse agonist like?
how do these agonists work?
could be said that it has a negative efficacy.
receptors have a low constituative activity, every now and then without an agonist it can illicit a response due to it being dynamic, inverse agonists bind, stabalise and prevent the receptor from doing this.
what is the EC50?
the effecting concentration giving 50% of the maximum response