Pharmacology is a branch of medicine, biology, and pharmaceutical sciences concerned with drug or medication action, where a drug may be defined as any artificial, natural, or endogenous molecule which exerts a biochemical or physiological effect on the cell, tissue, organ, or organism. It is the science of drugs including their origin, composition, pharmacokinetics, therapeutic use, and toxicology. More specifically, it is the study of the interactions that occur between a living organism and chemicals that affect normal or abnormal biochemical function. If substances have medicinal properties, they are considered pharmaceuticals.
An agonist is a chemical that activates a receptor to produce a biological response. Receptors are cellular proteins whose activation causes the cell to modify what it is currently doing. In contrast, an antagonist blocks the action of the agonist, while an inverse agonist causes an action opposite to that of the agonist.
Physical Review Letters (PRL), established in 1958, is a peer-reviewed, scientific journal that is published 52 times per year by the American Physical Society. As also confirmed by various measurement standards, which include the Journal Citation Reports impact factor and the journal h-index proposed by Google Scholar, many physicists and other scientists consider Physical Review Letters to be one of the most prestigious journals in the field of physics.
A receptor antagonist is a type of receptor ligand or drug that blocks or dampens a biological response by binding to and blocking a receptor rather than activating it like an agonist. Antagonist drugs interfere in the natural operation of receptor proteins. They are sometimes called blockers; examples include alpha blockers, beta blockers, and calcium channel blockers. In pharmacology, antagonists have affinity but no efficacy for their cognate receptors, and binding will disrupt the interaction and inhibit the function of an agonist or inverse agonist at receptors. Antagonists mediate their effects by binding to the active site or to the allosteric site on a receptor, or they may interact at unique binding sites not normally involved in the biological regulation of the receptor's activity. Antagonist activity may be reversible or irreversible depending on the longevity of the antagonist–receptor complex, which, in turn, depends on the nature of antagonist–receptor binding. The majority of drug antagonists achieve their potency by competing with endogenous ligands or substrates at structurally defined binding sites on receptors.
Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr. was an American pharmacologist and biochemist born in Burlingame, Kansas. Sutherland won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1971 "for his discoveries concerning the mechanisms of the action of hormones", especially epinephrine, via second messengers, namely cyclic adenosine monophosphate, or cyclic AMP.
Alfred Goodman Gilman was an American pharmacologist and biochemist. He and Martin Rodbell shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discovery of G-proteins and the role of these proteins in signal transduction in cells."
The two-pore-domain or tandem pore domain potassium channels are a family of 15 members that form what is known as leak channels which possess Goldman-Hodgkin-Katz (open) rectification. These channels are regulated by several mechanisms including signaling lipids, oxygen tension, pH, mechanical stretch, and G-proteins. Their name is derived from the fact that the α subunits consist of four transmembrane segments, and each pair of transmembrane segments contains a pore loop between the two transmembrane segments. Thus, each subunit has two pore loops. As such, they structurally correspond to two inward-rectifier α subunits and thus form dimers in the membrane.
The British Journal of Pharmacology is a biweekly peer-reviewed medical journal covering all aspects of experimental pharmacology. It is published for the British Pharmacological Society by Wiley-Blackwell. It was established in 1946 as the British Journal of Pharmacology and Chemotherapy. The journal obtained its current title in 1968.
Dexibuprofen is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID).
The Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering pharmacology. It has been published since 1909 by the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET). The journal publishes mainly original research articles, and accepts papers covering all aspects of the interactions of chemicals with biological systems.
Biological Abstracts is a database produced by Clarivate Analytics. It includes abstracts from peer-reviewed academic journal articles in the fields of biology, biochemistry, biotechnology, botany, pre-clinical and experimental medicine, pharmacology, zoology, agriculture, and veterinary medicine, and has been published since 1926.
The Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal that reports the most current research in the fields of physiology, nutrition, pharmacology, and toxicology. Content is contributed to the magazine by recognized experts and scientists in the field.
Planta Medica is a peer-reviewed journal published by Thieme Medical Publishers and covers medicinal plants and bioactive natural products of natural origin. Planta Medica is the official journal of the Society for Medicinal Plant and Natural Product Research (GA). According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal's 2016 impact factor is 2.342. Planta Medica is a Q1 journal in integrative and complementary medicine, and a Q2 journal in plant sciences.
Oliver Howe Lowry was an American biochemist. He devised the Lowry protein assay, the subject of the most-cited scientific paper in history.
The IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY is an open-access website, acting as a portal to information on the biological targets of licensed drugs and other small molecules. The Guide to PHARMACOLOGY is developed as a joint venture between the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology (IUPHAR) and the British Pharmacological Society (BPS). This replaces and expands upon the original 2009 IUPHAR Database. The Guide to PHARMACOLOGY aims to provide a concise overview of all pharmacological targets, accessible to all members of the scientific and clinical communities and the interested public, with links to details on a selected set of targets. The information featured includes pharmacological data, target, and gene nomenclature, as well as curated chemical information for ligands. Overviews and commentaries on each target family are included, with links to key references.
The Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of pharmacy and pharmacology. It is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. It is an official journal of the British Pharmaceutical Conference. It was established in 1870 and acquired its current title in 1949. The editor-in-chief is D. Jones.
Pharmacogenomics is a peer-reviewed medical journal established in 2000 and published by Future Medicine. The editors-in-chief are David Gurwitz, Howard McLeod, and Munir Pirmohamed. The journal covers the field of pharmacogenomics.
bioRxiv is an open access preprint repository for the biological sciences co-founded by John Inglis and Richard Sever in November 2013. It is hosted by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL).
Herald Scholarly Open Access is a publisher of various academic journals. It has a postal address in Herndon, Virginia, United States, but is actually based in Hyderabad, India. Herald Scholarly Open Access has been included on Beall's List of potential predatory open-access publishers, and has faced other criticisms of its publishing practices.
