Methodology of the search for and creation of original drugs

Abstract

Original drugs are those that differ in the structure, mechanism, and formulation and that have proved advantages over the existing preparations. The main goal of creating original drugs is to improve the efficacy of pharmacotherapy. The author describes drug exploratory research and development methods: the principle of similarity to physiologically active substances, the design of structures that affect selected targets (receptors, ion channels, enzymes, chaperones, expression factors, etc.), and the study of the dependence of pharmacological effects on the chemical structure, as well as the content of three stages of original drug development, drawing specific examples of creating new drugs.