Medicines by Design

Medicines by Design aims to explain how scientists unravel the many different ways medicines work in the body and how this information guides the hunt for drugs of the future. Pharmacology is a broad discipline encompassing every aspect of the study of drugs, including their discovery and development and the testing of their action in the body. Much of the most promising pharmacological research going on at universities across the country is sponsored by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Working at the crossroads of chemistry, genetics, cell biology, physiology and engineering, pharmacologists are fighting disease in the laboratory and at the bedside.