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Drug Design

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Cancer

  • 54 Accesses

Synonyms

Drug development; Targeted drug design

Definition

The process of discovering, inventing, improving, and/or testing a new therapeutic agent for the treatment of a specific disease.

Characteristics

Most of the drugs used in classical cancer chemotherapy were discovered by serendipity or by trial and error. A problem with such drugs arises because, in addition to having a desirable cytotoxic effect on cancer cells, many of these drugs can adversely affect rapidly dividing normal cells, such as gastric mucosal cells lining the stomach or hematopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow. This lack of specificity is a major contributing factor for the severity of side effects of classical cancer chemotherapy, which can include immunosuppression, nausea, vomiting and other gastrointestinal toxicities, and damage to the brain (neurotoxicity), heart (cardiotoxicity), liver (hepatotoxicity), kidney (renal toxicity), and lungs (pulmonary toxicity). The recent trend in anticancer drug...

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References

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See Also

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  • (2012) Dasatinib. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of cancer, 3rd edn. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, p 1060. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_1518

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  • (2012) Humanized monoclonal antibody. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of cancer, 3rd edn. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, p 1760. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_6844

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, MS, USA

    Roy J. Duhé

Authors
  1. Roy J. Duhé
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Roy J. Duhé .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Abt. Tumorgenetik, Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, Heidelberg, Germany

    Manfred Schwab

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Duhé, R.J. (2014). Drug Design. In: Schwab, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cancer. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27841-9_1735-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27841-9_1735-3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-27841-9

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