Metals in Medicine (Electronic book text, 2nd ed.)

"Metals in Medicine" is a textbook directed a senior undergraduates and beginning graduate students, which describes metal-based agents for treating and diagnosing disease. Opening chapters present basic bonding concepts that are applicable to metallo-drugs and their biological targets, interactions that exist between the agents and substances in the biological milieu, basic pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties including transport and uptake of drugs by the cells, and methods for measuring efficacy and toxicity of agents. The steps from drug discovery to market place are also briefly outlined and discussed. These chapters lay the groundwork, in order that students can clearly understand how agents work, whatever their subject background.

The remaining chapters focus on individual metallo-drugs and agents for treating and detecting disease, their synthesis, structure and general properties, known mechanism of action and important physical and chemical principles that apply. Throughout the book, "Feature Boxes" expand on features of drugs that are not directly related to studying metals in medicine, for example discovery, medical use, specialist assays, and metals in biology. At the end of the chapters there are specifically designed problems/exercises that apply basic kinetic, thermodynamic and chemical principles to practical problem solving in metals in medicine.