Drug testing

Periclinal Testing

Stage 1

 Substance we think will make a good drug is tested on human cells and tissues

• we can easily and cheaply test lots of substances.
• however it does not give us much insight onto how it would effect an entire organism.

Stage 2

We can now move onto testing live animals e.g., mice and rabbits.

• This helps us get better insight of the toxicity and efficacy of the drug as mammals work quite like humans.
• However there are ethical issues against this (no consent from animal) and its not a 100% guaranteed safe drug because of this process.

Clinical Testing

Step 1

Give the drug at a low dosage to healthy volunteers just to check the drug doesn’t have any problems.

Step 2

Slowly increase the dosage, whilst doctors keep a close eye on the healthy patients to check for any health determents.

• This should help doctors find the maximum dosage able to be prescribed before any serious side effects.

Step 3

If all goes well, drug is given to specific patients with disease the drug is aiming to target at a low dosage.

Step 4

After this, the dosage is increased slowly in hopes to find the optimum dosage.

• Optimum dosage is the concentration in which the drug is prescribed at it maximum efficacy and minimum toxicity.

Step 5

Results are then written up and peer-reviewed/analysed by other scientists

• These results are heavily critiqued by other scientists to ensure there has been no miscalculations of data.