Prodrug
A prodrug is a pharmacologically inactive medication or compound that, after intake, is metabolized (i.e., converted within the body) into a pharmacologically active drug. Instead of administering a drug directly, a corresponding prodrug can be used to improve how the drug is absorbed, distributed, metabolized, and excreted (ADME). Prodrugs are often designed to improve bioavailability when a drug itself is poorly absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract. A prodrug may be used to improve how selectively the drug interacts with cells or processes that are not its intended target. This reduces adverse or unintended effects of a drug, especially important in treatments like chemotherapy, which can have severe unintended and undesirable side effects. History Many herbal extracts historically used in medicine contain glycosides (sugar derivatives) of the active agent, which are hydrolyzed in the intestines to release the active and more bioavailable aglycone. For example, sal ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Prontosil
Prontosil is an antibacterial drug of the sulfonamide group. It has a relatively broad effect against gram-positive cocci but not against enterobacteria. One of the earliest antimicrobial drugs, it was widely used in the mid-20th century but is little used today because better options now exist. The discovery and development of this first sulfonamide-containing drug opened a new era in medicine, because it greatly widened the success of antimicrobial chemotherapy in an era when many physicians doubted its still largely untapped potential. At the time, disinfectant cleaners and topical antiseptic wound care were widely used but there were very few antimicrobial drugs to use safely inside living bodies. Antibiotic drugs derived from microbes, which are relied on heavily today, did not yet exist. Prontosil was discovered in 1932 by a research team at the Bayer Laboratories of the IG Farben conglomerate in Germany led by Gerhard Domagk. Domagk received the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physiol ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Terfenadine
Terfenadine is an antihistamine formerly used for the treatment of allergic conditions. It was brought to market by Hoechst Marion Roussel (now Sanofi) and was marketed under various brand names, including Seldane in the United States, Triludan in the United Kingdom, and Teldane in Australia. It was superseded by fexofenadine in the 1990s due to the risk of a particular type of disruption of the electrical rhythms of the heart (specifically cardiac arrhythmia caused by QT interval prolongation) and has been withdrawn from markets worldwide. Pharmacology Terfenadine acts as a peripherally-selective antihistamine, or antagonist of the histamine H1 receptor. It is a prodrug, generally completely metabolized to the active form fexofenadine in the liver by the enzyme cytochrome P450 3A4. Due to its near complete metabolism by the liver immediately after leaving the gut, terfenadine normally is not measurable in the plasma. Terfenadine itself, however, is cardiotoxic at high ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Codeine
Codeine is an opiate and prodrug of morphine mainly used to treat pain, coughing, and diarrhea. It is also commonly used as a recreational drug. It is found naturally in the sap of the opium poppy, ''Papaver somniferum''. It is typically used to treat mild to moderate degrees of pain. Greater benefit may occur when combined with paracetamol (acetaminophen) or a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) such as aspirin or ibuprofen. Evidence does not support its use for acute cough suppression in children. In Europe, it is not recommended as a cough medicine for those under 12 years of age. It is generally taken by mouth. It typically starts working after half an hour, with maximum effect at two hours. Its effects last for about four to six hours. Codeine exhibits abuse potential similar to other opioid medications, including a risk of addiction and overdose. Common side effects include nausea, vomiting, constipation, itchiness, lightheadedness, and drowsiness. Serious ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pharmaceutical Drug
Medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal product, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy ( pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the medical field and relies on the science of pharmacology for continual advancement and on pharmacy for appropriate management. Drugs are classified in many ways. One of the key divisions is by level of control, which distinguishes prescription drugs (those that a pharmacist dispenses only on the medical prescription) from over-the-counter drugs (those that consumers can order for themselves). Medicines may be classified by mode of action, route of administration, biological system affected, or therapeutic effects. The World Health Organization keeps a list of essential medicines. Drug discovery and drug development are complex and expensive endeavors undertaken by pharmaceutical companies, academic scientists, and governments. As ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bayer
Bayer AG (English: , commonly pronounced ; ) is a German multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company and is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies and biomedical companies in the world. Headquartered in Leverkusen, Bayer's areas of business include: pharmaceuticals, consumer healthcare products, agricultural chemicals, seeds and biotechnology products. The company is a component of the EURO STOXX 50 stock market index. Bayer was founded in 1863 in Barmen as a partnership between dye salesman Friedrich Bayer (1825–1880) and dyer Friedrich Weskott (1821–1876). The company was established as a dyestuffs producer, but the versatility of aniline chemistry led Bayer to expand its business into other areas. In 1899, Bayer launched the compound acetylsalicylic acid under the trademarked name Aspirin. Aspirin is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. In 2021, it was the 34th most commonly prescribed medication in the United State ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sulfanilamide
Sulfanilamide (also spelled sulphanilamide) is a sulfonamide antibacterial drug. Chemically, it is an organic compound consisting of an aniline derivatized with a sulfonamide group. Powdered sulfanilamide was used by the Allies in World War II to reduce infection rates and contributed to a dramatic reduction in mortality rates compared to previous wars. Sulfanilamide is rarely if ever used systemically due to toxicity and because more effective sulfonamides are available for this purpose. Modern antibiotics have supplanted sulfanilamide on the battlefield; however, sulfanilamide remains in use today in the form of topical preparations, primarily for treatment of vaginal yeast infections such as vulvovaginitis caused by '' Candida albicans''. The term "sulfanilamides" is also sometimes used to describe a family of molecules containing these functional groups. Examples include: * Furosemide, a loop diuretic * Sulfadiazine, an antibiotic * Sulfamethoxazole, an antibio ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gerhard Domagk
Gerhard Johannes Paul Domagk (; 30 October 1895 – 24 April 1964) was a German pathologist and bacteriologist. He is credited with the discovery of Sulfonamide (medicine), sulfonamidochrysoidine (KL730) as an antibiotic for which he received the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The drug became the first commercially available antibiotic and marketed under the brand name Prontosil. While working in the pathology department of the University of Münster, Domagk was invited to join the IG Farben branch at Elberfeld (later Wuppertal) in 1927. His duty was to test chemical compounds prepared at the IG Farben laboratory for potential drugs. A novel compound synthesised by Friedrich Mietzsch and Joseph Klarer, a benzene derivative of azo dye attached with sulphonamide group as a side chain was found to have antibacterial activity against human bacterium ''Streptococcus pyogenes.'' In 1935, Domagk's only daughter, Hildegarde, injured herself and contracted a streptococcal in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sulfa Drug
Sulfonamide is a functional group (a part of a molecule) that is the basis of several groups of drugs, which are called sulphonamides, sulfa drugs or sulpha drugs. The original antibacterial sulfonamides are synthetic antimicrobial agents that contain the sulfonamide group. Some sulfonamides are also devoid of antibacterial activity, e.g., the anticonvulsant sultiame. The sulfonylureas and thiazide diuretics are newer drug groups based upon the antibacterial sulfonamides. Allergies to sulfonamides are common. The overall incidence of adverse drug reactions to sulfa antibiotics is approximately 3%, close to penicillin; hence medications containing sulfonamides are prescribed carefully. Sulfonamide drugs were the first broadly effective antibacterials to be used systemically, and paved the way for the antibiotic revolution in medicine. Function In bacteria, antibacterial sulfonamides act as competitive inhibitors of the enzyme dihydropteroate synthase (DHPS), an enzyme i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Paul Ehrlich
Paul Ehrlich (; 14 March 1854 – 20 August 1915) was a Nobel Prize-winning German physician and scientist who worked in the fields of hematology, immunology and antimicrobial chemotherapy. Among his foremost achievements were finding a cure for syphilis in 1909 and inventing an important modification of the technique for Gram staining bacteria. The methods he developed for staining tissue made it possible to distinguish between different types of blood cells, which led to the ability to diagnose numerous Hematology, blood diseases. His laboratory discovered arsphenamine (Salvarsan), the first antibiotic and first effective medicinal treatment for syphilis, thereby initiating and also naming the concept of chemotherapy. Ehrlich introduced the concept of a Magic bullet (medicine), magic bullet. He also made a decisive contribution to the development of an antiserum to combat diphtheria and conceived a method for standardising therapeutic Drug, serums. In 1908, he received the No ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sahachiro Hata
was a prominent Japanese bacteriologist who researched the bubonic plague under Kitasato Shibasaburō and assisted in developing the antisyphilitic drug arsphenamine in 1909 in the laboratory of Paul Ehrlich. Hata received three unsuccessful nominations for the Nobel Prize, one from Swiss surgeon Emil Kocher for Chemistry in 1911 and two by Japanese colleagues Hayazo Ito and G Osawa for Physiology or Medicine in 1912 and 1913, respectively. Early life Hata was born in Tsumo Village, Shimane prefecture (now part of Masuda City) as the eighth son of the Yamane family. At the age of 14, he was adopted by the Hata family, whose male members were doctors from generation to generation. Hata completed his medical education in Okayama at the Third Higher School of Medicine (now Okayama University School of Medicine). In 1897, he became an assistant at Okayama Prefectural Hospital where he learned internal medicine from Zenjiro Inoue and biochemistry from Torasaburo Araki. Plague re ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Arsphenamine
Arsphenamine, also known as Salvarsan or compound 606, is an antibiotic drug that was introduced at the beginning of the 1910s as the first effective treatment for the deadly infectious diseases syphilis, relapsing fever, and African trypanosomiasis. This organoarsenic compound was the first modern antimicrobial agent. History Arsphenamine was first synthesized in 1907 in Paul Ehrlich's lab by Alfred Bertheim. The antisyphilitic activity of this compound was discovered by Sahachiro Hata in 1909, during a survey of hundreds of newly synthesized organic arsenical compounds. Ehrlich had theorized that by screening many compounds, a drug could be discovered that would have anti-microbial activity but not kill the human patient. Ehrlich's team began their search for such a " magic bullet" among chemical derivatives of the dangerously toxic drug atoxyl. Arsphenamine was used to treat the disease syphilis because it is toxic to the bacterium '' Treponema pallidum'', a spiroche ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Glucuronides
A glucuronide, also known as glucuronoside, is any substance produced by linking glucuronic acid to another substance via a glycosidic bond. The glucuronides belong to the glycosides. Glucuronidation, the conversion of chemical compounds to glucuronides, is a method that animals use to assist in the excretion of toxic substances, drugs or other substances that cannot be used as an energy source. Glucuronic acid is attached via a glycosidic bond to the substance, and the resulting glucuronide, which has a much higher water solubility than the original substance, is eventually excreted by the kidneys. Enzymes that cleave the glycosidic bond of a glucuronide are called glucuronidases. Classes of glucuronides Acyl glucuronide Carboxylic acids are a common functional group in many medications, such as NSAIDS, anticonvulsants, and diuretics. One common pathway for the clearance of carboxylic-acid-containing drugs is via glucuronidation. By conjugating one such drug to a glucuro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |