Frequently Asked Questions and Answers
Basic questions about the PDTDB
- What is drug and it's effects?
- Where do drugs come from?
- What is target or biological target or drug target?
- What is the difference between a drug and a medicine?
- What is the docking (or molecular docking)?
- How drugs are named?
- What are the routes of administration of drugs?
- What are the types of medical systems?
General questions about the PDTDB
- What is SMILES?
- What is ADMET?
- What is docking score?
- What is drug design?
- What is drug action?
- What are the types of drugs?
- What are the types of diseases?
What is drug and it's effects?
Drug is a chemical substance used in the treatment, cure, prevention, or diagnosis of disease or used to otherwise enhance physical or mental well-being. A drug may have medicinal, intoxicating, performance enhancing or other effects when taken into a human body or the body of another animal.
The sources of drugs are extracted from plants (leaves, seeds, barks, fruits, roots, etc.), animals (fish, frog, cow, horse, etc.), minerals (clay, iron, gold, charcoal, iodine, etc.), laboratory (wet-lab or dry-lab) (salicylates, sulfonamide, human insulin, etc.), and microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, etc.).
What is target or biological target or drug target?
The biological target is often referred to as a drug target, or simply target. A biological target is anything within a living organism to which a drug is directed and/or binds.
What is the difference between a drug and a medicine?
A drug is any type of substance that alters body functioning upon intake whereas a medicine is a chemical substance that is used for treatment of a disease. A medicine is a drug, but a drug is not medicine.
What is the docking (or molecular docking)?
Docking is a method which predicts the preferred orientation of one molecule to a second when bound to each other to form a stable complex. Docking is frequently used to predict the binding orientation of small molecule (drug candidates) to their protein target in order to predict the affinity and activity of the small molecule. Docking plays an important role in the rational design of drugs.
Drug are named by chemical name (describes the chemical structure), generic name (official nonproprietary name of a drug - usually chosen from greek word or latin word), and brand name (sometimes more than one, if it is produced by more than one company).
What are the routes of administration of drugs?
A route of administration is the path by which a drug is taken into the body. Routes of administration are generally classified by the location at which the substance is applied. Routes can also be classified based on where the target of action is. Action may be intravenous (giving medications or fluids through a needle or tube inserted into a vein), injection (insertion of liquid into the body with a syringe), inhaled (drawing smell into the lungs by breathing), oral (tablet or capsule or syrup taken through the mouth), transdermal (entering the bloodstream by absorption through the skin), topical (applied to skin or mucous membranes to treat ailments), or rectal (applied inside the rectum). For more details about various drug administration procedures, refer http://www.safemedication.com/safemed/MedicationTipsTools/HowtoAdminister/
What are the types of medical systems?
Medical systems are categorized as modern medical techniques (such as Pharmacotherapy), traditional medical systems (such as Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Allopathy, Naturopathy, Siddha, Unani) and complementary therapies (such as Yoga, Acupuncture, Reflexology).
The Simplified Molecular Input Line Entry Specification or SMILES is a line notation for the chemical structure of small molecules. For more details, refer http://www.daylight.com/dayhtml/doc/theory/theory.smiles.html
In pharmacokinetics, ADMET may refer to Absorption (a compound to reach a tissue), Distribution (the compound which carried to its effector site), Metabolism (compounds begin to break down as soon as they enter the body), Excretion (compounds and their metabolites need to be removed from the body via excretion, after the completion of process), and Toxicity (the potential or real toxicity of the compound). It describes the disposition of a pharmaceutical compound within an organism.
Docking score is a numeric value which is used to predict the strength of the non-covalent interaction between two molecules after they have been docked. Fitness of a docking result is evaluated according the RMSD (Root Mean Square Deviation).
Drug design, sometimes referred to as rational drug design or more simply rational design, is the inventive process of finding new medications based on the knowledge of a biological target. In the most basic sense, drug design involves the design of small molecules that are complementary in shape and charge to the biomolecular target with which they interact and therefore will bind to it.
Drug action is the biochemical physiological mechanisms by which the chemical produces a response in living organisms. The action of drugs on the human body is called pharmacodynamics, and what the body does with the drug is called pharmacokinetics. The drugs that enter the human tend to stimulate certain receptors, ion channels, act on enzymes or transporter proteins.
Drug are simply categorized into agonists (they stimulate and activate the receptors) and antagonists (they stop the agonists from stimulating the receptors).
What are the types of diseases?
A disease is a condition of impaired health resulting from a disturbance in the structure or function of the body. The major classification of diseases are Infections, Allergic diseases, Metabolic disorders, Cancer, Toxic diseases, Psychosomatic diseases and Mental diseases.
