Biological systems pharmacological properties

The prediction of clinical effects from pharmacological data is the Holy Grail of many pharmacologists. But because pharmacological data can be obtained from biological systems at different levels of complexity, there are a number of rungs in the ladder of extrapolation to clinical effects. And how, the reader may wonder, is this pursuit relevant to the context of our discussion on complexity and emergent properties ... 

The biological functions ol magnesium, such as ns essential role as a nuirier. ils activation of enzyme systems, and its pharmacological properties, have been widely investigated. Nevertheless, some aspects of its critical physiological role remain obscure. 

The dihydropyridine, tetrahydropyridine, and piperidine ring systems are found in numerous natural and synthetic compounds, many of which have interesting pharmacological properties. This section discusses a small selection of compounds that have been synthesized and studied because of their interesting biological properties. 

Structural features that promote biological activity are sometimes called biophores. They are divisible into pharmacophores and toxicophores. Pharmacophores impart desirable properties on a molecule (e.g., pharmacological activity or a particular fragrance). Toxicophores are responsible for undesirable effects such as toxicity (e.g., mutagenicity and skin sensitization). The same molecule can have more than one descriptor that can act as both a pharmacophore and a toxicophore in the same or different biological systems. Examples here are the toxic side effects of anti-cancer drugs and the use of Warfarin, a commercially available rat poison, to help reduce the formation of blood clots in human heart disease. 

Our own group has recently published an approach to extract pharmacological property classes that are directly related to chemical compounds from Medline abstracts. The system is based on a commercial solution, the TEMIS platform for text analysis, using so-called Hearst patterns. Patterns indicative of information on the biological activity of compounds were identified and used to analyze Medline abstracts and the unstructured text field in DrugBank for drug classification statements. We identified additional information not yet contained in DrugBank annotation fields.69... 

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