The Principles of Pharmacology: How Drugs Alter Signaling Pathways in the Body

Master how drugs modulate the body’s signaling pathways

Most medicines work not by creating new physiological processes, but by modulating the body's existing signaling systems, the internal language of hormones, neurotransmitters, and cellular messengers. Essential Pharmacology illuminates this central concept while providing accessible yet rigorous mathematical foundations for understanding quantitative pharmacology.

Written by Carl E. Creutz, Harrison Professor of Medical Teaching in Pharmacology, Emeritus at the University of Virginia, this text guides students through drug absorption, distribution, and biotransformation; clinical pharmacokinetics with practical dosing models; and comprehensive pharmacodynamics including receptor theory, competitive antagonism, and partial agonists. The book explores G-protein coupled receptors, second messenger cascades, and signaling networks that drugs target. By emphasizing general principles, it complements specialized texts in clinical therapeutics, veterinary medicine, toxicology, antimicrobial therapy, and nursing practice.

Readers will find:

• Quantitative pharmacology presented with mathematical rigor yet accessible to students with undergraduate science and mathematics training
• Complete drug-receptor interaction models covering competitive antagonists, partial agonists, allosteric mechanisms, and spare receptor theory
• Clinical pharmacokinetics with single-dose and steady-state models enabling rational drug dosing and therapeutic monitoring
• Detailed receptor-effector mechanisms including G-protein signaling, second messengers, and the networks controlling physiological responses
• Focus on the unifying principle that modern pharmacology modulates endogenous signaling rather than creating novel body processes

Essential Pharmacology serves medical, nursing, pharmacy, and other health professional students building theoretical foundations in pharmacology. It equally benefits biomedical researchers, pharmaceutical scientists, and public policy professionals seeking to understand drug development principles and therapeutic limitations.

CARL E. CREUTZ, PHD, is Harrison Professor of Medical Teaching in Pharmacology, Emeritus, at the University of Virginia. where he joined the Department of Pharmacology in 1981.