Computer-aided prediction of drug toxicity and metabolism.

Abstract

All medicines must be safe for human use. This simple statement belies the complexity of regulations, both national and international, as well as time and financial resource required to ensure drug safety. To establish drug safety “hazard” is ascertained following which risk, or conversely drug safety, may be confirmed. Toxicity tests, normally using surrogate animal species, are required to ascertain drug hazard, or otherwise. If a drug is determined to be too hazardous, i.e., too toxic for its intended use, then it will not be developed further. Considering that the drug development process may take up to 8–10 years and cost hundreds of millions dollars (see Chapter 1), from discovery to registration, it is essential that drug toxicity be identified as early as possible. The aim of this chapter is to review briefly the more common toxicological assays, and then to assess the progress made by computer-aided toxicity and metabolism prediction to identify toxic drug entities.KeywordsExpert SystemMaximum Tolerate DoseDrug ToxicitySkin SensitizationToxicity PredictionThese 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.