ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with pharmogeny, the genesis or origin of drug products. The era of drug discovery, development, and application to patient care of these has had profound, positive effects on humanity. Economic forces together with growing regulatory requirements have so modulated the talented efforts of industrial pharmaceutical scientists that a special system or process of drug research and development has evolved. The drug development process is a terribly expensive one; its costs inexorably increase as governments require progressively more preclinical and clinical studies to assure the safety of new drugs. The use of the more common biologically directed chemical synthesis approach is most likely to result in yet another drug with many properties in common with others already known or being developed in competitive laboratories. The design of selective, enzyme inhibitors is one of the most exciting approaches to the development of new drugs.
