PREFACE

Page 1

  This book is intended for a broad readership, starting with curious and thoughtful college undergraduates and, reaching beyond, to professionals and researchers in the life sciences and medicine. It is hoped that it will also be useful to the educated lay person with an interest in health and medicine.

  An effort has been made to integrate chemistry, biology, drug discovery and medicine in a way that is clear and self-explanatory. Heavy use has been made of chemical structures, since they provide a fundamental key to the language of life and the human activities that flow from it. Our age has seen the rapid evolution of molecular medicine as a critical part of the broader fields of health care and biochemical bases of human disease. The understanding of human illness at the molecular level has brought and will bring great benefit to mankind.

  There is a price to be paid in any attempt to understand molecular medicine, because that comprehension is greatly aided by the ability to decipher chemical structures which many have regarded as too onerous a challenge. One purpose of this book is to demonstrate that an adequate understanding of chemical structures is within the reach of most educated people, and well worth the effort. The first two parts of this book aim to provide the insights and background required to appreciate the architecture of therapeutic molecules and their target proteins, as they parade though the subsequent pages of this book.