Every drug has to go through a design process. The procedure here helps to know how exactly the drug reacts with the living body and its after-effects. Thus, ensuring drug safety and effectiveness. However, three key factors drive the majority of this design process. These aspects include metabolism, pharmacokinetics (PK assay), and toxicity of the given product. Don’t worry if you aren’t much aware of these factors. We will be discussing each of them here in detail so that you won’t have any confusion regarding them. Plus, you will be able to understand the design procedure of drug discovery.
Metabolism
It is a common term we often hear concerning physical health. In case you don’t know, metabolism is the body’s capability to break down a substance and alter its chemical structure. This way, it becomes convenient for the body to excrete the component. Now, this capability will work similarly on drugs as it works on other consumed food items.
It means the duration of a drug to stay in a living body and react with it depends on metabolism. Therefore, the product’s effect can differ from organism to organism. The drug won’t have much time to interact with the body for individuals with a higher metabolism. The opposite will happen for individuals with low metabolism.
For this reason, drugs are designed in a way that drug metabolism increases with its concentration in the body. But as soon as the saturation of enzyme sites is achieved, the increase in dosage stops affecting the metabolism.
Pharmacokinetics
Pharmacokinetics definition refers to PK assay as the study of a drug’s movement through the patients’ body. In pharmacokinetic testing, different biological fluids such as blood and plasma are analyzed. The drug concentration found in these fluids can help understand its body movement at varying points in time. Hence, experts can see the body’s effects on the given product through PK bioanalysis.
PK clinical trial takes place in the early drug development phases. The pharmacokinetic testing helps in knowing the efficacy and safety of the drug for human or other organisms’ consumption. Experts can further use the obtained results to improve the product and get the desired effect from it. Here, even the excreted fluids like urine get analyzed to study the drug’s movement properly.
Toxicity
Every drug can have an effect on different body organs. This influence also changes with the dosage of the drug in the body. Therefore, the toxicity studies are conducted to identify any toxic effects on the consumer. It is almost like PK bioanalysis. However, the testing here only focuses on the toxicity of the drug.
The early toxicity and pharmacokinetic testing also help in reducing the overall cost of drug development. Hence, these tests should be conducted appropriately.
Conclusion
We hope all this information helped you understand the importance of drug metabolism, toxicity testing and pharmacodynamics clinical trials. But remember, all these procedures have to be validated first to ensure that they are suitable enough to deliver accurate results. For this reason, drug developers prefer to take PK bioanalysis services where their products can get analyzed correctly.