Tab Article
Drug discovery and designing is a billion-dollar industry. It is a highly interdisciplinary field and needs participation from medicinal chemists, organic chemists, analytical chemists, pharmacologists, pharmaceutical chemists and technologists, biologists, molecular biologists, biochemists and systems biologists. It takes 12-15 years to bring a new drug molecule to the market. Recently, this field has seen a number of remarkable changes which have helped in speedy drug discovery. However, the number of new drugs entering the market is still very low, mostly due to failures during clinical trials, side-effects, toxicity, poor bioavailability, etc. At the same time, many existing drugs have been withdrawn from the market due to safety issues.
Drug Design: Basics and Applications is designed to highlight several of these issues as well as to provide suggestions for process improvement and solutions for specific problems. Each chapter of this book is contributed by domain experts from industry, academia or research institutions in India and aboard. The book can be seen as divided into two parts. The first part introduces the readers to fundamental concepts such as target and lead identification and in vitro assessment methodologies. The second part is dedicated to the coverage of several critical diseases. It covers topics such as TB, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, inflammation, cardiotonics, inositides, G protein coupled receptors and human hepatic drug metabolism. With this coverage, this book will be useful for scientists, researchers, teachers and advanced students in the area of drug discovery and design.