Measuring Pharmacodynamics: From Ligand Binding to Clinical Outcomes

Drugs are biologically active compounds. Drug discovery and drug development rely on methods for measuring biological activity. The term “activity” is quite general. In practice, a substance’s biological activity can refer to how a substance affects a biological pathway, cell-level responses, safety risks, how long a substance resides within in a system, as well as a substance’s effects in an organism (called pharmacodynamics). The design of methods for measuring activity is a critical aspect of drug discovery. The design of robust and informative methods can accelerate the drug discovery and development process.