Topic outline

  • Introduction

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    A medicine is commonly defined as a substance or preparation that can treat or prevent disease. Historically, most medicines were made from natural products. Advances in the last two centuries have led to the introduction of man-made chemical medicines, biologics and gene therapies. In addition, new technologies, such as tissue engineering , which uses living cells to repair tissues or organs, and nanomedicine , which uses tiny ‘nano’ particles in a variety of healthcare settings, have increased the options available.

    These training materials provide short descriptions of the different types of medicine, how they work and how they are developed.

  • Synthetic Chemical Medicines

    Chemical medicines comprise man-made molecules created in the laboratory by combining small atoms in a specific sequence and structure. Commonly used atoms include carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, and are usually obtained from petrochemicals derived from crude oil and natural gas liquids. In contrast to some other medicines, chemical medicines are not produced by living cells such as bacteria. In fact, chemical medicines are usually quite simple in design and are produced using chemical processes in large quantities in specialist manufacturing facilities (Figure 1). Many have been used by patients for many decades.

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    Figure 1.     a) Simple structure of the chemical molecule paracetamol and b) the more complex structure of the biologic medicine insulin.