BJP Concise Guide to Pharmacology 2023/24 – out now!

The essential guide for those working in the vital search for new drugs

A FREE education and research resource

What’s in it for you?

Published as a special issue in the British journal of Pharmacology every 2 years, The Concise Guide to PHARMACOLOGY provides brief overviews of the key properties of over 1,800 human drug targets and their pharmacology, and is a view of the data in the IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY that allows side by side comparison of members of families of drug targets.

As a go to place for finding the best tools to use in the laboratory for any targets you are working on, and as an up to date list of the key reference material to read, there is no better resource for a pharmacologist.

The Concise Guide to Pharmacology provides:

• An evidence base, with over 4,650 references cited and listed
• Official internationally approved classification and nomenclature for human drug targets
• Links to chemical and omic databases, PubMed or Patents to obtain further information
• Pharmacological tools to identify a particular target in experimental investigations
• Links to the open access IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY database.

Enjoy FREE access to:

• Introduction and other protein targets
• G protein-coupled receptors
• Ion channels
• Nuclear hormone receptors
• Catalytic receptors
• Transporters
• Enzymes

International scale and scientific value

• Made up of over 500 pages, where nearly 1,800 human drug targets are described
• Over 3,300 ligands are identified, including over 2,000 synthetic organic molecules and over 50 antibodies
• Over 5,600 interactions between ligands and targets are described quantitatively, allowing assessment of the potency/affinity of these interactions
• It provides an authoritative voice on nomenclature of these pharmacological targets through close links with NC-IUPHAR
• This edition was put together with the help of over 215 collaborators representing industry and academia from 22 countries
  
  

Not just for pharmacologists

The broad coverage includes 3 sections on ion channels, which will be of interest to physiologists.  For many examples, molecular data are correlated with ion conductances at the cellular and channel level.  Additionally, the large section on enzymes, with a major focus on kinases, peptidase and proteinases, will be relevant for biochemists and cell biologists wishing to identify whether selective tools for their enzyme of interest are available.

Teach pharmacology?

For those who teach pharmacology, the Concise Guide provides a handy starting point for researching specific pharmacological targets (receptors, ion channels, transporters, enzymes and other targets) which may be identified in lectures and practical classes.  The further reading highlighted for these targets will allow greater depth of insight from authoritative sources.

Use it as a teaching resource and make sure your students have free access:

www.guidetopharmacology.org/concise

How to make the most of the Concise Guide to PHARMACOLOGY 2023/2024

For those new to a research topic, the Concise Guide allows a ready comparison of individual pharmacological targets within a family.

Overview – Each family is introduced with an Overview, which includes the nomenclature status of the family and general data, for example on the endogenous ligands for the particular receptor family.

Table of Targets – Each table of targets includes clickable links to HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) and UniProt, free online databases of the gene and protein information.

Where available, the table identifies the pharmacology (the most selective tools available) of that individual molecular target, with agonists, antagonists, substrates, products, and labelled ligands listed.

Comments sections underneath the tables identify generic or species variation and any association of targets with inherited disorders, together with any limitations of the pharmacological tools.

Further reading focusses on published reviews of the target family, highlighting the most relevant and recent publications, allowing the reader to identify further relevant resources for increasing the depth and breadth of their understanding.

This post has been copied and re-produced from the British Journal of Pharmacology website (https://bpspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14765381/concise_guide_to_pharmacology.html) in order to publicise the Concise Guide to Pharmacology directly to followers of this blog and users of the IUPHAR/BPS Guide to Pharmacology.