Τόμος 4 (1986) – Τεύχος 4 – Άρθρο 1 – Επιθεώρηση Κλινικής Φαρμακολογίας και Φαρμακοκινητικής-Ελληνική Έκδοση – Volume 4 (1986) – Issue 4 – Article 1 – Epitheorese Klinikes Farmakologias και Farmakokinetikes-Greek Edition

Receptors and Drug Actions

CH. T. PLESSAS AND S. T. PLESSAS

4: 141-156 (1986)

PHARMAKON-Press: Epitheorese Klin. Farmakol. Farmakokinet.

4: 141-156 (1986)

Receptors are specific cellular structures with which drugs and endogenous substances interact, binding by complementari­ly, and using a variety of chemical bonds (co­valent, electrostatic, ionic-dipole, dipole-dipole, hydrogen and hydrophobic), to trigger changes in activity which result in the observed effect. In regard to the way the drug-receptor inte­ractions might take place and for the mode of drug action various theories have been propo­sed: occupancy, rate, induced fit, macromolecu­lar perturbation, activation-aggregation. Recent progress in studies of the biochemistry of nu­cleic acids, the structure of proteins, the nature of enzymes, and the mechanism by which they act permit us to describe possible modes of drug actiοn at the molecular level. The present state of the art assumes that the majority of the drugs act at the molecular level by one of the four following mechanisms: (a) effects on enzy­mes (inhibition of enzymatic systems or altera­tion of the specificity of the enzymes), (b) alte­ration of molecules that serve as templates (in the case of antimetabolites), (c) alteration of the permeability of biological membranes and (d) formation on annular compounds or chelates.

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