Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Diversity and sustainability: evolution, information and institutions
- Part A Plant communities and the generation of information
- Part B The value of plant-generated information in Pharmaceuticals
- 4 The pharmaceutical discovery process
- 5 The role of plant screening and plant supply in biodiversity conservation, drug development and health care
- 6 The economic value of plant-based pharmaceuticals
- Part C The institutions for regulating information from diversity
- Part D The importance of cultural diversity in biodiversity conservation
- Index
4 - The pharmaceutical discovery process
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Diversity and sustainability: evolution, information and institutions
- Part A Plant communities and the generation of information
- Part B The value of plant-generated information in Pharmaceuticals
- 4 The pharmaceutical discovery process
- 5 The role of plant screening and plant supply in biodiversity conservation, drug development and health care
- 6 The economic value of plant-based pharmaceuticals
- Part C The institutions for regulating information from diversity
- Part D The importance of cultural diversity in biodiversity conservation
- Index
Summary
Pharmaceutical research has become a highly rational although still developing science. In the course of a few decades, preparing plant extracts has been replaced by biophysical measurements, computer modeling of protein and drug molecules, and biotechnology. In recent years, however, ethnomedicine and tropical biodiversity are being proposed as alternative sources of badly needed or, as some believe, safer drugs.
In this chapter we bridge the communication gap between the specialist and the interested non-specialist as we describe the nature of modern pharmaceutical science. We first go back about 150 years to trace some of the concepts of modern drug discovery. Two examples from the recent literature then illustrate how chemical experience, rational methods and ‘natural products’ work together in the development of a pharmaceutical. We contrast these examples with three recent discoveries of extraordinary drugs that nature has given us. And finally we summarize the relative merits of the two approaches and briefly discuss biodiversity issues that are extremely important for pharmaceutical innovation today.
The pharmaceutical scientist thinks in terms of chemical structures. They are pieces in the gigantic puzzle that we are still assembling. For this reason we accompany our narrative with some of these pictures. Without them, ‘bridging the gap’ would be incomplete.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Intellectual Property Rights and Biodiversity ConservationAn Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Values of Medicinal Plants, pp. 67 - 92Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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