Historique
Chapitre
Drug design: designer drugs
Auteur(s) :
FOLKERS, G. ;
KUT, E. ;
BOYER, M.
Année
2010
Page(s) :
53-63
Sous-type de document :
Extrait de document / Document extract
Langue(s) :
Anglais
Éditeur(s) :
Berlin : Springer
ISBN :
978-3-540-68995-9
Domaine :
Autres substances / Other substances ; Drogues illicites / Illicit drugs
Discipline :
PRO (Produits, mode d'action, méthode de dépistage / Substances, action mode, screening methods)
Autres mots-clés
Note générale :
In: The design of material, organism, and minds: Different understandings of design. Konsorski-Lang S., Hampe M. (Eds.), Springer-Verlag, 2010, 300 p.
Résumé :
This article interrogates the contemporary comprehension of rational drug design in the development of pharmaceutical products with therapeutic and enhancing properties and its extensions to designer drugs on the grey and black market. The latter not only evidently leads to ethical and hence societal questions of standardizing the state of well-being of body and mind, but also virtually sets the boundaries between therapeutic and enhancing drug usage. At the same time, molecular design is based on a rigorous model of living beings. Processes of health and disease are assigned to functioning or malfunctioning biochemical structures and systems that can be targeted and pharmacologically modified. In reviewing the history of the rational approach in drug design, it becomes apparent that the specific single-targeted chemical intervention to cure diseases is against its premises insufficiently productive. The overwhelming complexity of the living can only be partially understood by still comparably weak technologies and hence makes it difficult to succeed without serendipitous discoveries. Here, advances in systems biology promise improvements in drug development strategies. A straight-forward approach is taken in the discovery of new designer drugs. By testing molecular variations of known drugs directly in humans, the official drug test requirements can be bypassed. In doing so, new substances can be produced fast and cheaply, though, at the prize of health risks of uninformed test subjects.
Affiliation :
Collegium Helveticum, ETH Zurich and University of Zurich, Zurich, Suisse / Switzerland
Cote :
A00564