Basic pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamic principles.

Abstract

The successful development of new molecules with utility in the prevention and treatment of cancer requires a thorough understanding of the pharmacologic properties of these agents. This includes characterizing their interactions with specific molecular targets and defining their pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties early in the clinical development process. Pharmacokinetics is the analysis of drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion.1 Often, a drug’s pharmacokinetic profile is summarized by a mathematical representation of its concentration in plasma over time. Understanding a drug’s pharmacokinetic properties is important both for the rational use of these new agents and for explaining the interpatient and intrapatient variability that occurs when these agents are administered to large populations of patients. Pharmacodynamics extends these observations by relating time-dependent kinetic processes to actual clinical drug effects including include both therapeutic and toxic drug actions. Therefore, pharmacodynamics is important because it is ultimately the discipline that relates drug pharmacokinetics to clinically relevant endpoints.KeywordsCentral CompartmentMean Residence TimeElimination Rate ConstantChemoprevention AgentDrug EliminationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.