L2 - What is a medicine?

• Medicine


  A substance used to treat or cure a disease, containing API and inactive ingredients, eg binding agents
• Biopharmaceutics


  How physicochemical drug properties affect the drug performance in the body, and how to optimise drug delivery systems
• Pharmacokinetics


  What the body does to a drug
• Pharmacodynamics


  What a drug does to the body
• Dissolution


  The process of a solid drug becoming a solution
• Thermodynamics


  The study of energy and its transformations in chemical systems
• Lipophilicity


  The ability of a drug to dissolve in fat
• Partition coefficient


  A measure of the distribution of a drug between two immiscible solvents, eg oil and water
• Henderson-Hasselbalch equation


  An equation that relates the pH of a solution to the ratio of its acidic and basic forms
• Drug solubility


  The ability of a drug to dissolve in a solvent (constant)
• Log P

  A measure of a drug's lipophilicity
• Pharmacogenomics


  How genes affect a person's response to drugs
• Drug delivery


  The process of getting a drug to its site of action
• Potent drugs

  Highly effective drugs
• Bioavailability


  The amount of drug that reaches its site of action and the rate at which it gets there. Rate of absorption.
• Tissue action


  The effect of a drug on specific tissues
• Drug metabolism


  The process of a drug being broken down and eliminated from the body
• ADME

  Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, Excretion
• MEC

  Minimum effective concentration of a drug
• MTC

  Minimum toxic concentration of a drug
• Drug absorption


  The transfer of a drug from its formulation to circulation
• Therapeutic window


  The range of drug concentrations that are effective and safe
• Drug


  API that elicits therapeutic action