Systems chemical biology pharmacology

In the field of medicinal chemistry, scientists identify, synthesize, develop, and study chemicals to use for diagnostic tools and pharmaceuticals. Pharmacology is the study of how chemical substances interact with living systems. As biological knowledge has increased, the biochemical causes of many diseases have been determined and the field of pharmacology has grown tremendously. 

A complex set of interrelationships involving physical, chemical, biological, and pharmacological factors are involved when a metal ion interacts with a biological system. Therefore, it is more important to characterize the metal-biological system than to characterize the species in a simple chemical system. In a comprehensive work. Walker et al. (2003) reviewed approximately 100 diverse contributions dating from 1835 to 2003 to evaluate the relationships between about 20 physicochemical properties of cations and their potential to produce toxic effects in different organisms. 

Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA. Chemistry and Chemical Biology Graduate Program, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA. SelectScreen Services, Discovery Assays and Services, Cell Systems Division, Invitrogen Corporation, Madison, Wisconsin, USA. Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA. Correspondence should be addressed to K.M.S. (shokat cmp.ucsf.edu). 

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