Metabolic Screening in Drug Development: In-Vivo to In-Silico

Abstract

Inter-individual differences in drug action and side-effects have given rise to various types of metabolic screening techniques in drug development. They range from in-vitro, in-vivo techniques to sophisticated in-silico techniques. While validation of most systems is still largely pending, such techniques offer predicting various characteristics of drugs, namely metabolic stability, consequent half-life, dosage schedule, or induction potential. The techniques are getting refined everyday which offers better avenues of research and drug development. We discuss in brief latest metabolic screening techniques currently in use.