Lecture 1 - Intro to Pharmacology Flashcards
Define Pharmacology
The science of drugs; their mechanisms of action, how their effects can be measured, their discovery, design and development, their actions on the organism and the actions of the organism on them
Define Therapeutics
The medicinal use of drugs to treat or relieve the symptoms of
disease.
Define Pharmacy
How drugs are formulated and dispensed for use as medicines.
Includes the law governing the medicinal use of drugs
Define Toxicology
That branch of pharmacology that focusses on the harmful effects of chemicals, including drugs
Define Drug
a chemical substance of known structure, other than a nutrient or an essential dietary ingredient, which, when administered to a living organism, produces a biological effect.
How are drugs named?
- 3 names: chemical, common, proprietary
- category: according to therapeutic use e.g. antihypertensive
- mechanism of action e.g. inhibitor
What type of molecules are drugs?
Drugs are exogenous molecules that mimic or block the actions of endogenous molecules
4 target proteins for drugs
- receptors for NT or hormones
- enzymes
- ion channels
- carrier or transporter molecules
What are steric factors
e.g. size and flexibility of the drug
effects how well drug binds to binding site
chemical bonds to bind reversibly
hydrophobic and H bonds and weal VDW
chemical bonds to bind irreversibly
covalent interactions
Define selectivity
for a drug to be used therapeutically it must be selective in its action
not cause any side effects
How to achieve selectivity?
design drug that binds with high specificity to target protein and no other
Define Pharmacodynamics [PD]
what the drug does to the body
Define Pharmacokinetics [PK]
what the body does to the drug
