disease and drug development

Stages of drug development

• There are 5 stages of drug development: preclinical tests on cells and tissues; preclinical tests on live animals; clinical trials on human volunteers; clinical trials on patients and peer review.
• Preclinical tests on cells and tissues:
• Tests for efficiency
• To see if it works in the way we want it to
• Once it works in the way we want it to, we can move onto stage 2
• Preclinical tests on live animals:
• Tests for toxicity - is it harmful and how harmful is it
• Gives us an idea of the dosage that tis needed
• Tests for side affects in other parts of the body
• Once we find out the correct dosage and no there are no harmful side affects in the animals, we can move onto stage 3
• Clinical trials in humans:
• Tests for side effects in humans
• The healthy volunteers are often paid
• If there are no side effects we can move onto stage 4
• Clinical trials on patients:
• Double blind trial
• 1 group is given the drug and the other a sugar pill. The patients and doctors don't know which is which.
• Removes bias/placebo effect
• The drug now has a licence that can be easily taken away
• Once the drug has been proven to work, we move onto stage 5
• Peer review:
• Stops fake claims

types of diseases

• There are 5 types of diseases.
• Diseases and their causes:
• Autoimmune - the immune system attacking and damaging the body's own cells
• communicable - a pathogen is caught from an infected person
• Deficiency - a lack of nutrients in the diet (scurvy)
• Genetic - a fault in DNA that changes how cells work and it is non-communicable
• Lifestyle - something we choose to do, e.g. smoking
• Pathogen - microorganisms that gives diseases (bacteria, virus, fungus, protozoa, worms)