Pharmacodynamics

Pharmacodynamics is the study of the biochemical and physiological effects of drugs and the mechanisms of drug action and the relationship between drug concentration and effect.

Pharmacodynamics is the study of what a drug does to the body, as opposed to pharmacokinetics, which is the study of what a body does to a drug.

The concept of pharmacodynamics has been the expanded to include Multicellular Pharmacodynamics (MCPD). Multi-cellular pharmacodynamics (MCPD) is the study of the static and dynamic properties and relationships between a set of drugs and a dynamic and diverse multicellular 4 dimensional organization. It is the study of the workings of a drug on a minimal multicellular system (mMCS), both in vivo and in silico. Networked Multicellular Pharmacodynamics (Net-MCPD) is a further extension of the concept of MCPD. Net-MCPD is extends MCPD to model regulatory genomic networks together with signal transduction pathways, as part of a complex of interacting components in the cell. For a fuller explanation of these concepts see the articles:

• Jackson, R.C. (2003) Predictive software for drug design and development. Pharmaceutical Development and Regulation 1 ((3)), 159-168.

• Werner, E., In silico multicellular systems biology and minimal genomes, DDT vol 8, no 24, pp 1121-1127, Dec 2003. (Introduces the concepts MCPD and Net-MCPD)

A good source for further information and posting to experts can be found courtesy of Dr. David W. A. Bourne, OU College of Pharmacy [1].

By Manan Mehta