The technology of drug testing is rapidly advancing. This book brings together world renowned experts in the fields of pharmacology and physiology united with the common theme of describing methods, theoretical concepts and in vitro systems used to study drug receptor mechanisms and the action of drugs on receptors. The first section deals with the physiology and pharmacology of integrated natural systems, the second with the new theoretical ideas used to model receptor systems (i.e. the nature of efficacy, receptor activation) and the third with the new in vitro systems available for the...

This, the 148th volume of the Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology series, focuses on the very core of pharmacology, namely receptor theory. It is fitting that the originator of receptor pharmacology, A. J. CLARK, authored the fourth volume of this series 63 years ago. In that volume CLARK further developed his version of receptor theory first described four years earlier in his classic book The Mode of Action of Drugs. An examination of the topics covered in volume 4 reveals a striking similarity to the topics covered in this present volume; pharmacologists today are still as interested in...