Chemical drugs, features

TABLE 5.4. General pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic features of protein versus chemical drugs... 

This comprehensive and useful text provides a broad overview of the neurobiological basis of neurotoxic phenomena in human and veterinary medicine, as well as an alphabetical compendium that describes the neurotoxic properties of over 450 chemicals, drugs, and mixtures, including plants and venoms. It replaces the 1980 edition (available online at http //WWW.ohsu.edu/research/croet/faculty/spen-cer/book/first ed.html), which featured micrographs depicting the neuropathology of neurotoxic agents. 

Poor pharmacokinetics and toxicity are important causes of costly late-stage failures in drug development. It is generally recognized that, in addition to optimized potency and specificity, chemical libraries should also possess favorable ADME/Tox and druglike properties [77-80]. Assessment of druglike character is an attempt to decipher molecular features that are likely to lead to a successful in vivo and, ultimately, clinical candidate [81-83]. Many of these properties can be predicted before molecules are synthesized, purchased, or even tested in order to improve overall lead and library quality. 

The optimized drug product may be viewed as a drug-delivery system for the one or more drugs that it contains. The goal of this drug-delivery system is to release the drug(s) to produce the maximum simultaneous safety, effectiveness, and reliability, as depicted in Fig. 9. Various physicochemical product properties that influence the quality features of safety, effectiveness, and reliability are shown in Table 6. Some physicochemical properties can affect two or all three quality features of Fig. 9. For example, consider chemical stability. As a drug decomposes, if the... 

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