With such surrogate markers, clinical trials will be possible to determine efficacy of antidementia treatments in presymptomatic stages. The goal is to delay progressive

memory loss upon dementia onset so that older people can live longer lives with improved functioning and mental capacities. Selected abbreviations and acronyms AD Alzheimer’s disease FDG-PET fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography ∫MRI functional magnetic resonance imaging MCI Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical mild cognitive impairment PET positron emission tomography SP senile plaque NFT neurofibrillary tangle NP neuritic plaque Notes Supported by the Montgomery Street Foundation, San Francisco, Calif; the Fran and Ray Stark Foundation Fund for Alzheimer’s Disease Research, Los Angeles, Calif; the Department of Energy; NIH grants MH52453, AG10123, AG13308, and the Alzheimer’s Association Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical grant IIRG94101. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The path of a new drug from concept, to medication may be divided into

two phases, namely drug discovery and drug development. Clinical pharmacology, also Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical known as phase 1 or human pharmacology, constitutes one of the most critical steps in drug development, as it forms the link between drug discovery and preclinical and clinical drug development, and produces the necessary basis for the confirmatory phase 2 and 3 clinical trials of a new CX-5461 supplier chemical entity (NCE) in patients with the target indication. Clinical pharmacology constitutes an exploratory stage of drug development during which essential information Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical should be provided about the safety, the pharmacokinetics (quantitative description of the disposition of Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical a drug in the body or a body compartment over time: “what does the body do to the drug?”), and the pharmacodynamics (quantitative description of drug effects, activity, or toxicity: “what does the drug do to the body?”). Clinical pharmacology starts with the first-time-to-man (FTTM) administration of an

NCE and lasts throughout Idoxuridine drug development. Assessment of the short-term safety and tolerability of single and multiple doses of an NCE in healthy volunteers, whatever the route of administration, is the main objective of the FTTM studies. In addition, preliminary pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics (ie, surrogate or biornarkers of expected pharmacological activity and/or unwanted side effects) should be secondary objectives of these studies. Study design No specific guidelines exist; only three gold standards apply: the study should be double-blind and placebocontrolled, and safety is paramount. One dose level may be evaluated in small subgroups of 3 to 5 subjects (2 to 3 subgroups per dose level) and the dose must be increased only after careful review of all the data available from the previous dose level.