This work attempts a balanced appraisal of the sensitive issues surrounding the subject of ethics in drug research. It aims to make people involved in drug research and development think more carefully about the issues involved. The focus is on the more contentious areas of drug research.

This book reviews recent advances in the development of new anti-infla mmatory drugs. It addresses different therapeutic intervention possibi lities for new drugs, such as the cellular source of cytokines, specif ic receptors that induce cytokine synthesis, intracellular regulators of cytokine gene induction and expression, secretion and activation of cytokines, cytokine receptors and signaling pathways from these recep tors. Accordingly, experts were drawn from different backgrounds, incl uding academic research institutes, the pharmaceutical industry and cl inical pharmacology. In each...

In this book, emphasis is placed on the scientific background leading to the discovery of valproate, and its clinical development into one of the most widely used antiepileptic drugs, a milestone in drug therapy. It reviews the state of the drug, and looks at hypotheses on its mechanisms of action, its metabolism into pharmacologically active metabolites, its unique distribution characteristics, and its various clinical uses.