Drug discovery and development is a challenging, expensive and time consuming
field of research, requiring contributions from chemists, pharmacologists,
toxicologists, clinicians and practitioners. The ultimate goal is to generate a
safe and biologically active drug which can stall, or even reverse, the
pathological events that cause the disease condition. But in the search for the
drug a host of tests and trials must be applied to evaluate the efficiency and
safety of the newly developed molecule in the biological system. These trials or
"screening methods" are critical. On their basis the new molecule either becomes
accepted for usage, or is discarded forever.