"investigational drugs"

[Bonnie Taylor-Blake]

On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 10:25 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:

> on my blog:
>
> http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/investigational/

Arnold's piece on "investigational" and "investigational drugs"
reminds me of a hot phrase in the fields of pharmacology and medicinal
chemistry.

"Druggable targets" are proteins or peptides and the like (in the
body) to which pharmacologists/medicinal-chemists strive to design
agents (drugs) that will affect the function and/or structure of the
said proteins or peptides (so as to improve human health).

This brings us to "druggability."  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druggability

"Druggability" and "druggable" don't seem to be showing up in standard
dictionaries such as OED and Merriam-Webster.

-- Bonnie

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