Ateneo - UPO

The course will focus on basic pharmacology (how a drug affects the body and how the body affects the drug) and pharmacotherapy, with a focus on biotechnological drugs and advanced therapies.

1) Rossi, Cuomo - Farmacologia; 2) Katzung, Vanderah - Farmacologia generale e clinica 3) MORE COMPLICATED TEXT:Goodman and Gilman, Basi di Farmacologia (to be consulted in the library) 3) scientific literature; 4) documents on the EMA and FDA website

1) introduction to the general principles of pharmacology;
2) Define the peculiarities of biotech and advanced products compared to traditional drugs;
3) Illustrate the process of pharmaceutical R&D with examples;
4) Provide intellectual instruments to the student to define a rationale drug discovery program;

To fully learn the subject it is necessary to know:
- organic chemistry;
- biochemistry;
- physiology;
- pathology.

traditional lectures and reading material on the course website. The course will be interspersed with a practical laboratory session and group work.

The course will take place in the second semester.

The exam consists of a written test with multiple choice questions and open questions, for a total of 31 points.

Drug development: preclinical and clinical phases
Pharmacodynamics: receptors and signal transduction; concepts of agonists and antagonists; dose-response curves.
Pharmacokinetics: drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion.
Pharmacogenetics and toxicology.
Neurotransmission: pharmacological tools.
Biotech drugs: therapeutic proteins, monoclonal antibodies, vaccines.

Drugs for inflammation and pain: NSAIDs, glucocorticoids, opioids.
Chemotherapeutic agents (antibacterial and oncological).
Cardiovascular drugs: antiarrhythmics, drugs for heart failure, antithrombotics, anticoagulants, and fibrinolytics.
Antidyslipidemic drugs.
Diabetes medications: insulin, oral hypoglycemic agents, and newer therapies.
- Drugs acting on the nervous system: drugs for Parkinson's disease, antidepressants, anxiolytics, sedative-hypnotics, antiepileptics.
Respiratory system drugs.
Antineoplastic drugs: conventional chemotherapy, targeted therapy, and immunotherapy.

The aim of the course is to provide to the Biology student a basis of general pharmacology applied to clinical practice. Briefly, the knowledge of the concepts of agonism and antagonism, of substitutive, etiological and symptomatic drugs, in parallel with the knowledge of the causes of a pathology, will allow the students to understand the right therapy. Furthermore, the knowledge of biological targets, where they are expressed in the body and of which drugs are them the target, can allow to understand also the adverse effects of drugs in therapy. At the end of the course, the student will acquire a scientific language and will know how to use the correct terms to indicate the action of a drug.
In the event that the student was interested, this course can also provide the basis for approaching pre-clinical scientific research.