Week 6 Post 2

An important part of medicine and targeting the desired protein is how the drug gets from outside the body to the specific site. This can be done in many ways, mainly orally or through an I.V. Either way, the drug must pass through the blood. "Whole blood" is regular blood that is made by the body. This contains 45% by volume red blood cells, 1% white blood cells and platelets, and 54% plasma. Plasma contains mostly water, with some proteins and hormones the body produces. when designing a molecule, one must consider how the molecules in the blood could alter the drug. another thing to consider is how the drug will do when the kidneys try to filter it out of the blood, or how the liver will try to destroy it if it enters the body orally.

There are countless amounts of things one must consider when making a drug, at every step there are many things that can effect how your drug and make it ineffective or even toxic. even if you have a promising molecule, it may not respond well to blood or to the proteins that are transported through the blood.

Comments

  1. Ms. DunleyOctober 19, 2017 at 11:54 AM

    How would they test a drug first to make sure it would not be toxic when mixing in the bloodstream?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownOctober 30, 2017 at 5:38 PM

      To test whether is reacts with a part of the blood, they can use a bit of human blood in a test tube and mix it with the drug to see if anything precipitates. Otherwise they can test it on animals to make sure it doesn't harm a function of the body.

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