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.
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