Developing drugs

• Drugs are tested for :

  • efficacy - it must prevent or cure a disaster or at least make you feel better
  • Toxicity - Not too toxic or unacceptable side effects for the patient
  • Dosage - How much is needed/ safe to take
• Developing the drug:

  Preclinical testing:

  1. Researches test on cells/ tissues/ whole organs
  2. The small number of chemicals that have passed the last stage are tested on animals to find out how they work on a whole living organism + give info on Dosage, side effects
• Clinical trials: Healthy volunteers + patients :

  1. Low doses given to healthy people to check for side effects
  2. If drug safe - tried on small amount of patients to see if it treats the disease
  3. If seems to be safe + effective - bigger trials take place to find the optimum dose for the drug
  4. If medicine passes all the legal tests it is licenced so the doctor can prescribe it - the safety will be monitored for as long as it is used
• Double blind trials: efficacy

  1. Group of patients with target disease agree to take part in trials.
  2. Some given a placebo (medicine that doesn't contain the active drug being tested) + some given new medicine
  3. patients randomly allocated to the different groups + neither the patient nor the doctor knows who has received which drug until trial is over
  4. Often the placebo contains a different drug that is already used to treat the disease so the patient isn't deprived of treatment while taking part in the trial