Introduction

Pharmacology is one of the pillars of the drug discovery process. While the medicinal/organic chemist may create the candidate compound (sometimes referred to as a new chemical entity [NCE], an acronym that will recur later in this book), it is the pharmacologist who is responsible for testing it for pharmacological activity. A NCE is eventually investigated by several other groups of scientists (e.g., toxicologists, microbiologists, and clinicians), if it has demonstrated a potential therapeutic effect.