Questions tagged [pharmacology]
Pharmacology is the study of the interactions that occur between a living organism and chemicals that affect normal or abnormal biochemical function.
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Statistics for ratios to wildtype growth
I have a large dataset that represents a library of yeast deletion mutants and their growth under treatment from a compound. In the library alongside the mutants is a wild-type strain and I want to ...
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What would happen if somebody was administered caffeine while sleeping?
I know that drinking caffeine before sleep can disrupt your sleep and REM cycle, but I was wondering what would happen if hypothetically someone slept for 8 or so hours before being administered a ...
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Why does the throat close up during an allergic reaction?
I was thinking about anaphylaxis and how strange it is that exposure to an allergen, e.g. a peanut, would cause someone’s throat to close up to the point where they can’t breathe. Why does this happen,...
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Cell viability assay: Problems with MTT assay in the solubilization step
I am testing two compounds against 3 cell lines to determine cell viability. Two lines grow in Eagle media, one in DMEM (+10 Percent bovine serum) which contain phenyl red indicator.
I prepared 3 ...
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For Cytotox studies of anticancer compounds: What cell line can I use to check if my compounds will also damage healthy cells?
I am about to perform cytotox studies on cells with my synthesized compounds.
I want to test my structures against MCF7 cells (breast cancer) as well as a melanoma cell line. MCF7 should be vunerable ...
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How much effort is it to establish a cytotox assay for cancer cell lines against a small number of possible compounds?
I am currently testing a series (5-10) of small molecule compounds against an enzyme that are intended as inhibitors. This enzyme is meaningful for cell proliferation.
Until now, nothing was active ...
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Are stable isotopes ever used in pharmaceuticals?
Carbon has two stable isotopes, C-12 and C-13. Since they both have the same electronic structure they can both make up the same molecules, but presumably they may perform different functions in ...
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How does the area under the curve mean the total exposure to the drug?
I was wondering how the area under the curve in the case of a conc against time plot would be equal to the total exposure in the body? I know that this area is integrated using
AUC = ∫C dt
However ...
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Why do we not develop tolerance to endogenous factors?
In pharmacology, we studied the development of tolerance to the therapeutic effects of drugs. It is defined as the diminished response of the body to a drug as an adaptation to its continued presence.
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Can drugs be administered through penis?
I was reading this paper on routes of drug administration and noticed that it mentioned intravaginal drug administration. It looks like this is a good way to take drugs because there are a lot of ...
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Are psilocybin/psilocyn the only psychoactive compounds in psychoactive mushrooms?
Psilocybe cubensis is the most common psychedelic mushroom, and its active ingredients are psilocin and psilocybin (which is converted to psilocin in the body).
There are other psychedelic mushrooms, ...
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Hi, could someone explain what use-dependence is? And does it differ from one drug type to another? For instance anaesthetics vs anti-epileptics?
I may have understood it incorrectly but I read that in case of local anaesthetics, the use dependence is such that more the number of open sodium channels, more the number of drug molecules entering, ...
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What retrospective analysis happens after a clinical trial fails?
After a failed pharmaceutical clinical trial, what retrospective analyses are typically performed to understand why the drug program failed the trial? For example, are further experiments done to ...
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In drug discovery, what is an undruggable target? [closed]
The term "undruggable" is often use in drug discovery. As far as I understand it, it means "for which no inhibitor has been found so far".
It's a fuzzy, non-satisfying, definition.
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Is there any bloodstream chemical composition software simulator?
Let's say I'd like to know how certain substance affects bloodstream levels of certain drug during a period of time. Is there any simulation software available publicly to run such kind of simulation?
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drug-dna concentration
I want to understand how you calculate the final concentration of a Drug-DNA complex. I tried to mix equal concentration and volume of drug and DNA to form a complex and tried to see the absorbance ...
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How do you calculate the time until the steady-state of a drug?
I encountered a mathematically intriguing conundrum, in that it's related to medicine but is centered around mathematics.
Suppose drug A has a half-life in the body of 30 hours. The patient takes 40mg ...
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Why are there so many carbonic anhydrase structures in the Protein Data Bank?
I've been looking through PDB — the Protein Data Bank — and I noticed that the protein with the most structures is human carbonic anhydrase II (UniProt: P00918), with over a thousand X-ray structures.
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Bioavailability -- what is the effect of absorption rate?
I learnt about Bioavailability and this is the definition given by many sources:
...the fraction (%) of an administered drug that reaches the systemic circulation.
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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Does ellagic acid dissolved in DMSO react with Brain Heart Infusion media?
I dissolved 2mg of Ellagic acid in 500 microliter of DMSO. I used 100 microliters of this solution to test for antimicrobial susceptibility against E.faecalis by adding it to 100 microliters of BHI ...
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PEGylation safety and hybridomas
PEGylation is the covalent attachment of PEG (PolyEthylene Glycol) to molecules (e.g. proteins). It states in wikipedia ("PEGylation"):
The covalent attachment of PEG to a drug or ...
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How does hypokalemia antagonize lidocaine's effect?
I was reading the lidocaine user's manual for dentistry use and according to it and I quote "Lidocaine in concomitant use with acetazolamide, thiazides and loop acting diuretics. The hypokalemia (...
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Why are drug dosages so high in some mice studies?
On reading through some research on the effects of certain drugs I often come across staggeringly high dosages such as in this paper:
Römer, B., Pfeiffer, N., Lewicka, S., Ben-Abdallah, N., Vogt, M. ...
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What Produces the Postive Potenial in the lumen of the thick ascending loop of Henle?
In the Thick Ascending Loop of Henle, Paracellular diffusion of certain Solutes like magnesium and calcium takes place. Such diffusion is a result of the positive lumen potential.
Looking at the image ...
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how to perform ligand and DNA alignment in pymol
I need help in inserting ligand to specific base pair in DNA. I have a drug molecule and want to insert in between the base pairs I am interested in (it is dsDNA). Please note that it is a customed ...
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Difference between IC50 and Michaelis-Menten constant
I am new to biology, and getting to know the term IC50, I found that there is a connection between IC50 and Michaelis-Menten constant by the Cheng-Prusoff equation
$K_{i}=\frac{\mathrm{IC}_{50}}{1+\...
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Why does the Scatchard plot have a negative gradient?
I am very confused as to why the scatchard plot has a negative gradient. If the x axis shows increasing B, specific binding to a receptor, and on the y axis the specific binding (B)/concentration of ...
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Calculation of drug efficacy- mathematical biology approach
I am participating in a mathematical biology project.
I would like to discuss the following problem:
Let A be a drug such that $x_{o}$ chemical units of it kills 12% of $y$ cells per 1 day, I would ...
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What is the physical dimension of international unit (IU)?
I was skimming through a study [mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine boosters induce neutralizing immunity against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, page 6, figure 3(A)] on vaccine and I came across the ...
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Meaning of "acute LSD"
I am currently reading this research paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/1395848, and I'm confused by this line: "Serotonin Receptor mRNA Levels Are Unchanged by Acute LSD".
What is the ...
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What specific interaction between methylphenidate and quetiapine causes toxicity concerns?
A number of reputable sources on drug interactions posit a potential interaction between methylphenidate and quetiapine, described on Medscape as follows:
quetiapine increases toxicity of ...
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What mechanism causes the presence of photosensitizers in mitochondria to change membrane ionic currents?
In the original question, the article in question was talking about specifically about this compound, Benzoporphyrin:
Characterization of Perturbing Actions by Verteporfin, a Benzoporphyrin ...
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Is it advised to calculate QED parameters for salts?
QED (quantitative estimation of drug-likeness) is a score which helps you to predict if a small molecule is desirable as an orally absorbed drug, described in the Quantifying the chemical beauty of ...
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Medical Physiology
I've come across the topic of the influence of inhaled ammonia (caustic ammonia) on breathing rate and some cardiovascular changes. All of this stuff is thought to be mediated through the fifth ...
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What determines if a compound is primarily taken up by the lymphatic extensions rather than the portal vein blood supply in the intestinal villi?
I am currently studying the intestinal absorption/transport systems, but am confused about one part specifically. There are hydrophilic and lipophilic compounds (to varying degrees), and they get ...
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If blood vessels mostly aren't supplied by parasympathetic nerves, how effects through M3-ACh receptors are mediated?
Blood vessels throughout the body mostly aren't supplied by any parasympathetic fibres. But the effects of ACh through M3-ACh receptors would infact release NO (which acts on VSM and causes ...
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How easy is it for quantum dots to enter the intracellular portions of cells?
As quantum dots have better quantum yield than organic dyes, many are being developed as a substitute for them. Nonetheless, could these substitutes be small enough to enter inside cells as current ...
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Why do the mRNA vaccines for COVID need special lipids?
I've read that the Pfizer mRNA vaccine is delivered to the cell by encapsulating the fragile mRNA into a lipid nanoparticle. However, the lipid has to be PEGylated in order to avoid immunogenecity. ...
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Concentration of active ingredient
For some time now, I have been wondering why, when a tablet is taken, the concentration of active ingredient undergoes an exponential decrease after the maximum concentration value in the blood is ...
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Why does warfarin decrease biological activity of protein C?
Warfarin inhibits VKOR. Hence it disrupts vitamin K dependent $\gamma$-carboxylation of Fc- II, VII, IX, X.
But what exactly it does to Protein C and Protein S? How does it also affect anticoagulant ...
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Can you find the mass of drug X remaining in the body after an oral dose with only bioavailability and half-life?
I'm reviewing this question and think you can't find the answer with the information given.
A patient receives 1g of drug X as a single oral dose. Drug X has a
half-life of 12 hours and an oral ...
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Does one wing of fly contain harmful microbes and the other contain only antibodies? [closed]
There was this study but the conclusion and it's source's relability seemed a bit off. How come a house flies one wing contain all microbe and the other don't.
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What is the purpose of an siRNA screen in drug discovery?
In the paper "A genome-wide siRNA screen identifies a druggable host pathway essential for the Ebola virus life cycle" by Martin et al. the authors try to disrupt the Ebola life-cycle by ...
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Why do animal cells "mistake" rubidium ions for potassium ions?
So, I was browsing the Wikipedia article for rubidium, and came across this interesting tidbit:
Rubidium is not a known nutrient for any living organisms. However, rubidium ions have the same charge ...
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How do prodrugs exactly work? Are there multiple varieties of prodrugs?
I have been reading about a (new?) prodrug of LSD, 1CP-LSD, which is being synthesized in the body to LSD.
However, I don't know how exactly. I read somewhere, that another prodrug of LSD, 1P-LSD was ...
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Does LSD "stay" in your fat storage and then "returns" back?
This rumor was told me by a very anti-drug person. A stance I agree with only lightly.
The rumor was that when you take LSD, it stores itself in your fat storage, and then returns back in 3-6 months, ...
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Could a vaccine injecting B cells theoretically work?
So I was in the car riding to school today when I was struck with genius. Each B cell is attuned to a different pathogen, am I correct? By that logic, would a vaccine injecting a dose of B cells ...
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Are drugs made bitter artificially to prevent being mistaken for candy?
All drugs I remember tasting (with the notable exception of Aspirin) have bitter taste. Is the taste due to the active substance, or is a bittering agent added to them, perhaps to prevent overdose?
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How exactly does chemotherapy cause anemia?
I’ve been trying to figure this out for the past few hours but I still can’t find something as in depth as I’m looking for. So far all I’ve found is that chemo drugs kill bone marrow cells and some ...
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What degree of influence do SNPs have on activity of ligands at receptors?
I know that generally, evolution tends to evolve towards having some wiggle room in respect to effect of polymorphisms on binding of endogenous ligands, but with synthetic ligands, especially modern ...
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