why medical research is so important
Pharmacology
One of the largest fields of medical research is pharmacology. There is a simple reason for this; it is how pharmaceutical companies develop their products. With billions of dollars on the line for these companies they are usually willing to put a great deal of money into the necessary research.
Pharmacology is the field that studies the way drugs affect the body, the vast majority of the research in this field is dedicated towards developing new medications. At the most basic level this requires an understanding of how chemicals affect living organisms. This requires research at the biochemical level in order to understand what the effects are. This is usually focused on how the chemicals are absorbed and on what changes they have on the functioning of the cells. This level of research is not usually about developing new drugs but in understanding the process by which they work.
The next level of pharmacology research is in determining if a chemical substance has medicinal value. This is usually done by exposing a cell with the disease that you are hoping to cure to the chemical and seeing what the reaction is. If the chemical destroys the diseased part of the cell then there is potential to use it as a medication. Obviously there is still a long way to go in order to develop a medication but this is where things start.
If you have a medication that shows potential it will be necessary to determine how it affects the other cells in the body. After all there is little value in finding that a chemical destroys cancer cells for example if it also destroys all of the other cells in the body. There are a lot of potential interactions between living cells and medications that can occur so a lot of work is needed at this stage of pharmacology research.
Once you have a medication to the point where you believe that it will cure a disease and will be safe for use the next step in pharmacology research is clinical trials. This is where they will actually test the medication to see how well it works. This is done in stages usually moving from testing on animals to testing on people.
Because of the complex nature of the human body pharmacology research is usually broken down into several different fields. For example there will be people who focus only on developing medications for the cardiovascular system or the endocrine system. These specialists have an expertise in dealing with certain parts of the body they cannot develop a medication all on their own. Since most medications will affect the whole body it is necessary to study that effect as well. As a result there are also researchers who focus on the interactions that medications have with the body as a whole.
