How New Drugs Are Discovered

How New Drugs Are Discovered New drug development is complex and time consuming. Drug discovery and development starts with human needs and is based on good science. Science proven by scientific methods and avoiding shortcuts in designing and developing new drugs. Active ingredients or modify the chemical structure of existing active drug ingredients to form new drugs. The discovery of a new drug (the active ingredient of a medicinal product) and the development of one or more drug dosage forms are complex and highly technical. Therefore, there are no qualified individuals to carry out each stage from start to finish. Pharmaceutical development is carried out by scientists, working for pharmaceutical companies with extensive laboratory research, sophisticated equipment and the resources available to undertake it study. Plant Poison Before it was discovered that drugs could be synthesized, plants were the main source of physiologically active ingredients whose therapeutic properties could be tested. Some examples of drugs still in use today that were first discovered from plants are morphine from poppy flowers, quinine from cinchona bark, digitalis from digitalis lanata leaves, and belladona from the belladona herb. Its not found in plants to used as medicine for humans but to fight predators. But, the problem is the sufficient quantities that can't produce by plants. Inorganic Chemicals Inorganic substances such as pottasium, sodium, chloride and calcium which help in maintaning homeostatis was found in body fluids and tissue.. Disease can be caused by our bodies having too little or too much of these ingredients. Medicines from Animal Sources The use of ingredients from animals has been done since ancient Greece. Ancient pharmacists used ingredients from coral fish, earthworms, frogs, lizards, scorpions, snails, swallows, toads, snakes and woodlice to mix powders, oils and syrups. Products produced from animal sources such as thyroid hormone, insulin, estrogen, epinephrine, and diphtheria antitoxin are still used today. Medicine from Sea Sources The plant raw materials as a source of new medicines from topical rainforests has found by natural product researchers. Natural products researchers from branches of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and various research laboratories in various countries have screened organisms such as algae, invertebrates, and sponges. Natural Product Screening The process of screening which discovery of new drugs that may be used in clinical medicine. There are several approaches to screening compounds for their pharmacologic activity. All of these pharmacologic screenings depend on testing methods that are significantly associated with the disease being tested for in the laboratory. Discovering compounds and then testing them in several diseases is not considered a viable or viable approach to drug discovery. Initial testing of the drug is always done in-house laboratory in vitro, and often using animal models in vivo. Screening tests should be selected to enable a skilled technician to work easily and alert the technician to the potential the compound may have for the selected target disease. Such as the potential medicinal substances inhibit enzymes related to the disease. Currently, some screening of potential drug compounds can be carried out automatically. Synthetic Because of the many potential drugs found in plants, it is important to see whether these ingredients can be made chemically. The first drug that was synthetic was quinine. Then followed by morphine and cocaine. After the structural formula of a new drug has been found, the next step is to chemically synthesize it. This step is the most common method of making drugs used today. In addition, sometimes the basic structure of a drug is obtained from natural products and then converted in the laboratory into a semisynthetic drug. Biotechnology Biotechnology is the final approach to drug. This biotechnology is vitro process of changing genetic material for the purpose of creating new combinations of genes or altered genes. Recombinant Hepatitis B vaccine and recombinant insulin are two of the first biotechnology drugs.