Medication and Pharmacology Terms

A chemotherapy drug first found in a Caribbean sea squirt, which jams DNA repair rather than simply breaking the strands.

An opioid painkiller with a second action on brain chemistry, which accounts for both its usefulness and its unusual risks.

Tranquilizer is an older term for medications that calm anxiety or induce sedation, now mostly replaced clinically by more specific drug class names.

A substance being studied in the treatment of brain tumors.

Food, alcohol and dozens of other drugs shift its effect, which is why the dose is set by blood test rather than by body weight.

A drug used to lessen the toxic effects of substances that block the action of folic acid, especially the anticancer drug methotrexate.

A substance being studied in the treatment of several types of cancer.

Xeloda is the brand name for capecitabine, an oral chemotherapy drug converted in the body into its active anticancer form.

A substance being studied in the treatment of cancer.

A form of the anticancer drug paclitaxel combined with a protein called poliglumex that may have fewer side effects and work better than paclitaxel.

A brand name that never launched: the drug behind it survived, changed disease, and reached the market under another name.

An asthma tablet that blocks the receptor for leukotrienes, chemicals released during an allergic reaction that tighten the airways.

A drug used to prevent and to treat influenza virus infections.

A drug that is used to treat certain types of non-small cell lung cancer and is being studied in the treatment of other types of cancer.

Zestril is the brand name for lisinopril, a medication that lowers blood pressure by blocking a hormone that narrows blood vessels.

A cone snail venom peptide turned painkiller, which works only when delivered straight into the fluid around the spinal cord.

Zidovudine, known as AZT, was the first antiretroviral drug approved to treat HIV infection by blocking viral replication.

An asthma tablet that shuts down the enzyme making leukotrienes, rather than blocking the receptors those chemicals act on.

The white paste on a lifeguard's nose and in diaper cream, working as a physical barrier rather than as an absorbed drug.

The soluble salt that actually delivers the element, unlike the insoluble oxide, which sits on the skin and delivers none of it.