A Pharmacology Primer: Theory, Applications, and Methods

This edition incorporates a new trend in drug discovery, namely the consideration of pharmacokinetics and ADME properties of drugs (absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion) early in the process. As prospective new drugs are tested in more complex systems (with concomitantly more complex dependent variable values), the trend in screening is to test fewer compounds of higher (druglike) quality. Finally, this edition also hopefully fills a previous void whereby the ideas and concepts discussed can be applied to actual problems in pharmacological drug discovery in the form of questions with accompanying answers. The expanded version now spans pharmacology from consideration of the independent variable (drug concentration in the form of pharmacokinetics) to the dependent variable (system-independent measurement of drug activity). As with previous editions, the emphasis of this book is still on the chemist-biologist interface with special reference to the use of pharmacology by non-pharmacologists.