Drug Development
Give a general definition of a drug
A substance other than food intended to affect the structure or function of the human body
What is another name for a mutation in a gene that causes a different phenotype?
Allele
Name 3 model systems.
Bacteria, Yeast, Fruit Flies, C. elegans, Zebrafish, Brine Shrimp, Mice, Rats, Monkeys
What are the two things that you are required to wear for clothing when working in a lab?
Long pants/skirts, closed-toed shoes, lab coat, cloves, goggles
Name a model organism that is commonly used for drug screens?
Mammalian cells, C. elegans…
They will all be grey since R is dominant.
Give one reason why we don’t test newly developed drugs on humans first?
We don’t know the risks; we don’t know if the drug will work, we don’t know long term side effects…
You have a glass slide that you are using to visualize bacteria. It is time to dispose of it. What container do you put it in?
Biohazard sharps
Name the 5 steps of the drug development process
Drug discovery, preclinical, clinical trials, FDA review, Product Launch
If a child becomes sick with a disease that is recessive, what does that mean about his/her parents?
They must both have the mutant/recessive allele. Can be carrier or diseased.
Which model organism has high homology to humans?
mice
What does PPE stand for?
Personal Protective Equipment
Give a brief explanation of what a drug screen is
When you apply a large number of drug candidates to disease phenotype samples and look for improvement
Give two examples of how the environment can change your traits.
Sun lightens hair, eat right and exercise to reduce your risk of heart disease…
You are looking at how biofilms are formed. Which model organism would you use to study this? Mice, fruit flies, or yeast?
yeast
Explain the difference between biohazard waste and hazardous waste?
Biohazard waste is for all biological material such as bacteria, tissues samples etc. while hazardous waste is non-biological things such as chemicals
What is chemotaxis?
Movement of an organism in a direction towards or away from a chemical or particular substance
Give an example of an outcome for each type of mutation: negative, positive, neutral
Negative: disease, positive: survival advantages, neutral: different eye color
You are using C. elegans for a drug screen. You have a mutant worm that exhibits slower than normal movement caused by the slug-1 gene. Interestingly enough, we have found that humans also have a gene that has the same function as slug-1. You treat the mutant worms with Chemical FST and they then move much faster. You are excited and suggest bringing this drug to the market to make athletes run faster. Tell me 2 reasons why this is not ethical
It is not ethical because you have not done enough studies! You do not have good enough data to say this will work in humans. Also, should we “engineer” athletes to run faster?
You have non-pathogenic E. coli growing in a glass culture tube. When you go to transfer it to the bench top from the incubator, you drop it and the sample shatters in a small space on the floor. Tell me four steps you would take to clean up this mess properly and safely.