Foundation
What is a receptor?
A receptor is a protein on or inside a cell that receives a chemical message. Follow the message from binding to cellular response—and keep that mechanism separate from evidence of benefit in people.
6 min read
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Make the science click.
You do not need a scientific vocabulary to begin. Build one useful idea at a time.
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Cells communicate. Medicines can influence that conversation. Five connected ideas give you a way into the science.
Follow the starting path →The idea that connects the site.
Foundation
Agonist, antagonist—or something in between?
What matters is not only whether a molecule binds, but what it does to the response.
6 min read
How the body communicates
Foundation
What is a cell?
The smallest living unit that can carry out the coordinated work of life—and the setting in which signals, medicines and disease processes unfold.
3 min read
Foundation
How do cells communicate?
A chemical signal can carry information. What happens next depends on the cell receiving it.
5 min read
Foundation
What is a receptor?
A receptor is a protein on or inside a cell that receives a chemical message. Follow the message from binding to cellular response—and keep that mechanism separate from evidence of benefit in people.
6 min read
Foundation
What are hormones and neurotransmitters?
Two familiar words for chemical communication. The route, receptor and receiving cell explain why the categories overlap.
5 min read
Foundation
What is a signalling pathway?
A map of linked events—not a guarantee that the final outcome follows.
5 min read
How medicines act
Foundation
What is a medicine’s target?
Not necessarily an organ. Often, it is a particular piece of molecular machinery.
6 min read
Foundation
Agonist, antagonist—or something in between?
What matters is not only whether a molecule binds, but what it does to the response.
6 min read
Foundation
Why can one medicine affect several targets?
A molecule is not always faithful to a single pathway. Sometimes that is part of the design.
5 min read
Foundation
Peptides, proteins and small molecules.
Useful descriptions of chemistry. Not shortcuts to deciding what works.
6 min read
What happens in the body
Foundation
A medicine’s journey through the body.
What enters the body is not necessarily what reaches a target—or what remains there.
6 min read
Foundation
What does half-life mean?
A way to describe change over time—not a countdown until a medicine stops working.
4 min read
Foundation
Why do medicines have side effects?
The same biology that makes an effect possible can also make unwanted effects possible.
5 min read
Foundation
Why can the body’s response change over time?
Biology adapts. But a changing response can have more than one explanation.
5 min read