Medicinal chemistry

right|thumb|250px|The Green Pharmacy Cross (sometimes overlaid with Bowl of Hygieia), is widely used in on pharmacy signs. thumb|A medication is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. thumb|The Apothecary or The Chemist by Gabriël Metsu (–67)

A therapy or medical treatment is the attempted remediation of a health problem, usually following a medical diagnosis. Both words, treatment and therapy, are often abbreviated Tx, or Tx.

scientific branch of pharmaceutical chemistry

In pharmacology, bioavailability is a subcategory of absorption and is the fraction (%) of an administered drug that reaches the systemic circulation.

thumb|400 px|Dose response curves of a full agonist, partial agonist, neutral antagonist, and inverse agonist An agonist is a chemical that activates a receptor to produce a biological response. Receptors are cellular proteins whose activation causes the cell to modify what it is currently doing. In contrast, an antagonist blocks the action of the agonist, while an inverse agonist causes an action opposite to that of the agonist.

A nocebo effect is said to occur when a patient's expectations for a treatment cause the treatment to have a worse effect than it otherwise would have. For example, when a patient anticipates a side effect of a medication, they can experience that effect even if the "medication" is actually an inert substance. The complementary concept, the placebo effect, is said to occur when expectations improve an outcome.

thumb|Topics of pharmacodynamics Pharmacodynamics (PD) is the study of the biochemical and physiologic effects of drugs (especially pharmaceutical drugs). The effects can include those manifested within animals (including humans), microorganisms, or combinations of organisms (for example, infection).

molecule that binds to an enzyme and decreases its activity

phenomenon of drug metabolism

ration of concentrations in a mixture at equilibrium

quantitative prediction of the biological, ecotoxicological or pharmaceutical activity of a molecule

thumb|right|300px|An example of a pharmacophore model In medicinal chemistry and molecular biology, a pharmacophore is an abstract description of molecular features that are necessary for molecular recognition of a ligand by a biological macromolecule. IUPAC defines a pharmacophore to be "an ensemble of steric and electronic features that is necessary to ensure the optimal supramolecular interactions with a specific biological target and to trigger (or block) its biological response". A pharmacophore model explains how structurally diverse ligands can bind to a common receptor site. Furthermor

attempt to predict the structure of the intermolecular complex formed between two or more molecules

inventive process of finding new medications based on the knowledge of a biological target

200px|thumbnail|right| A carbon-11 labelled radiopharmaceuticalRadiopharmaceuticals, or medicinal radiocompounds, are a group of pharmaceutical drugs containing radioactive isotopes. Radiopharmaceuticals can be used as diagnostic and therapeutic agents. Radiopharmaceuticals emit radiation themselves, which is different from contrast media which absorb or alter external electromagnetism or ultrasound. Radiopharmacology is the branch of pharmacology that specializes in these agents.

rule of thumb that a compound is likely orally active if it violates at most one of: ≤5 hydrogen bond donors; ≤10 hydrogen bond acceptors; molecular mass of ≤500 Da; octanol-water partition coefficient of ≤5

thumb|Processes in pharmacokinetics ADME is the four-letter abbreviation (acronym) for absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion, and is mainly used in fields such as pharmacokinetics and pharmacology. The four letters stand for descriptors quantifying how a given drug interacts within body over time. The term ADME was first introduced in the 1960s, and has become a standard term widely used in scientific literature, teaching, drug regulations, and clinical practice.

biochemical interaction through which a drug produces its pharmacological effect

Semisynthesis, or partial chemical synthesis, is a type of chemical synthesis that uses chemical compounds isolated from natural sources (such as microbial cell cultures or plant material) as the starting materials to produce novel compounds with distinct chemical and medicinal properties. The novel compounds generally have a high molecular weight or a complex molecular structure, more so than those produced by total synthesis from simple starting materials. Semisynthesis is a means of preparing many medicines more cheaply than by total synthesis since fewer chemical steps are necessary.

compound showing promise as a development candidate in drug discovery

category of drugs used to classify a drug according to certain criteria

the relationship between the chemical structure of a compound and its biological or pharmacological activity

Kenyan chemist

American organic medicinal chemist, historian, and author

compound that increases the activity of a protein

Radiopharmacology is radiochemistry applied to medicine and thus the pharmacology of radiopharmaceuticals (medicinal radiocompounds, that is, pharmaceutical drugs that are radioactive). Radiopharmaceuticals are used in the field of nuclear medicine as radioactive tracers in medical imaging and in therapy for many diseases (for example, brachytherapy). Many radiopharmaceuticals use technetium-99m (Tc-99m) which has many useful properties as a gamma-emitting tracer nuclide. In the book Technetium a total of 31 different radiopharmaceuticals based on Tc-99m are listed for imaging and functional s

functional or anatomical change, at the cellular level, resulting from the exposure to a substance

method of delivering medication to a patient, increasing the concentration of the medication in some parts of the body relative to others

preparation of drugs

Toxicokinetics (often abbreviated as 'TK') is the description of both what rate a chemical will enter the body and what occurs to excrete and metabolize the compound once it is in the body.

according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a drug that contains no active moiety that has been approved by the FDA in any other application submitted under section 505(b) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act

attractive interaction between two molecules

agonist of some receptor subtype that's produced in the living organism, tissue or cell

chemical property measurement

over-stimulation at a neuromuscular junction due to an excess of acetylcholine

In pharmacology, an antitarget (or off-target) is a receptor, enzyme, or other biological target that, when affected by a drug, causes undesirable side-effects. During drug design and development, it is important for pharmaceutical companies to ensure that new drugs do not show significant activity at any of a range of antitargets, most of which are discovered largely by chance.

any organic compound with a vinyl group attached to a sulfone group

interdisciplinary medical specialty

process for producing a final medicinal product

In medicinal chemistry, bioisosteres are chemical substituents or groups with similar physical or chemical properties which produce broadly similar biological properties in the same chemical compound. In drug design, the purpose of exchanging one bioisostere for another is to enhance the desired biological or physical properties of a compound without making significant changes in chemical structure. The main use of this term and its techniques are related to pharmaceutical sciences. Bioisosterism is used to reduce toxicity, change bioavailability, or modify the activity of the lead compound, a