I understand the difference between the two, but I can’t find any information on how one determines what a drug will do when it interacts with a receptor site. Is it only figured out through trials after a drug is synthesized and seeing what it does, or is there a way to know/predict just by looking at structures of the molecule/receptors?
In: Biology
Two ways. First is through clinical trials. There’s four phases of the clinical trial for drugs. One of the longest is the preliminary phase in which a drug is synthesized and tested on animals to see the effect, both behaviorally and biologically. This takes years and lot of research before the FDA approves a drug for human testing
Second is purely by accident. Some doctors may note certain side effects of a drug and link what’s going on physically to what’s going on inside the body . The only example I can think of Vigara, which was supposed to be a heart medication but with the side effects being an erection it was just used as an erectile dysfunction medication instead.
Clinical trials. Give it to a bunch of people who need the money and see what happens basically.
Have a hypotheses based off other similar drugs, but basically it’s a dice roll.
There is actually a way to predict what a molecule will do just by looking at it! There is the concept of a “pharmacophore” — the particular shape and charge distribution of a molecule can tell you a lot about how it will interact with specific receptors. If I recall correctly, the process of drug discovery these days is largely computerized. The researchers take a supercomputer and fill it with possible molecules and then let the computer determine which molecules might have which effects, and which functional groups you can change out to change specific properties.
All that being said, once the computer spits out likely molecules, and they get synthesized, you still need to try them out in humans to see what the actual effects will be.
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