A Pharmacology Primer

Dr. Terry Kenakin is Professor of Pharmacology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. Prior to this, he spent 7 years in drug discovery at Burroughs-Wellcome. He then moved to GlaxoSmithKline for 25 years. Dr. Kenakin has written 11 books on Pharmacology, is the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Receptors and Signal Transduction, is on numerous Editorial Boards. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Comprehensive Pharmacology (Elsevier, 2022). He is the recipient of the 2008 Poulsson Medal for Pharmacology awarded by the Norwegian Society of Pharmacology for achievements in basic and clinical pharmacology and toxicology. He has also been awarded the 2011 Ariens Award from the Dutch Pharmacological Society and the 2014 Gaddum Memorial Award from the British Pharmacological Society, and the 2020 Goodman and Gilman Award in Receptor Pharmacology from ASPET.

Chapter 1 – What is Pharmacology?Chapter 2 – How Different Tissues Process Drug ResponseChapter 3 – Drug Receptor TheoryChapter 4 – Pharmacological Assay Formats: BindingChapter 5 – Agonists: The Measurement of Affinity and Efficacy in Functional AssaysChapter 6 – Orthosteric Drug AntagonismChapter 7 – Allosteric Drug InteractionsChapter 8 – Drug DiscoveryChapter 9 – Drug Development: Pharmacokinetics and Safety PharmacologyChapter 10 – Target-and System-based Strategies for Drug DiscoveryChapter 11 – Lead Optimization: Data-Driven AnalysisChapter 12 – Statistics and Experimental DesignChapter 13 – Selected Pharmacological MethodsChapter 14 – Exercises in Pharmacodynamics and PharmacokineticsGlossary of Pharmacological TermsAppendicesStatistical TablesMathematical Fitting Functions