--- title: Pharmacology description: Pharmacology is the study of how drugs interact with living systems. Learners will understand the mechanisms of drug action, absorption, metabolism, and excretion, as well as the therapeutic uses and potential side effects of major medication classes. category: health-medicine subcategory: medical-sciences difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/pharmacology --- # Pharmacology Pharmacology is the study of how drugs interact with living systems. Learners will understand the mechanisms of drug action, absorption, metabolism, and excretion, as well as the therapeutic uses and potential side effects of major medication classes. ## Available Resources 3 Books • 2 Courses • 8 Websites ## Websites ### 1. Drugs.com A searchable reference for prescription and over-the-counter medicines, with monographs covering indications, dosing, adverse effects, and pregnancy categories, plus an interaction checker. Useful for looking up an individual drug rather than learning pharmacological principles systematically. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.drugs.com **Tags:** drug reference, drug monographs, drug interactions, clinical pharmacology ### 2. Khan Academy Pharmacology Short lecture videos in the health and medicine section covering drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, receptor mechanisms, and major drug classes. After working through them you can reason about how a dose reaches its target and produces effects. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.khanacademy.org/science/health-and-medicine/pharmacology **Tags:** pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, drug classes, video lectures, premed ### 3. Osmosis An animated video library organized by drug class, pairing each mechanism with the clinical conditions it treats and its adverse effects. Aimed at medical and nursing students memorizing pharmacology for exams; most content sits behind a subscription. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.osmosis.org/learn/Pharmacology **Tags:** drug classes, medical school, nursing, video lectures, flashcards ### 4. Pharmacology2000 Forty-one chapters spanning the standard pharmacology curriculum, from autonomic and cardiovascular agents to antimicrobials and oncology, with visual reference pages and a large bank of practice questions with rationales. Built for medical, nursing, and anesthesia students. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.pharmacology2000.com/ **Tags:** pharmacology curriculum, practice questions, nursing, anesthesia, medical school ### 5. drugbank.com DrugBank is a comprehensive online database of drugs and drug targets, providing detailed chemical structures, pharmacology, mechanisms of action, interactions, and therapeutic data for FDA-approved, experimental, and natural products. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://drugbank.com **Tags:** websites, health-medicine, medicine--anatomy ### 6. pharmacologyeducation.org PharmacologyEducation.org is an online resource hub for pharmacology education, offering teaching materials, case-based lessons, and study aids for medical students and clinicians. It features lectures, tutorials, and content on drug mechanisms, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, dosing, adverse effects, and exam-style practice questions. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://pharmacologyeducation.org **Tags:** websites, health-medicine, medicine--anatomy ### 7. Khan Academy Health and Medicine Free video lessons and practice questions from Khan Academy on human anatomy and physiology organized by organ system, with material on common diseases, diagnostic tests and treatments. Learners build the foundational biomedical vocabulary and mechanisms needed before clinical training or MCAT and NCLEX study. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://khanacademy.org/science/health-and-medicine **Tags:** anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology, pharmacology, premedical ### 8. European Medicines Agency European Medicines Agency (EMA) is the EU regulator for medicines, providing guidance on the authorization, safety monitoring, and oversight of medicinal products. It offers regulatory guidelines, scientific opinions, safety alerts, and searchable information on approved medicines and pharmacovigilance resources. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://ema.europa.eu **Tags:** drug-regulation, marketing-authorisation, pharmacovigilance, clinical-trials, regulatory-affairs ## Podcasts ### 1. The Pharm So Hard Podcast **Author:** Jimmy Pruitt & Oscar Santalo Emergency medicine and hospital pharmacy podcast hosted by board-certified pharmacists Jimmy Pruitt and Oscar Santalo. Short episodes of five to thirty minutes review acute-care drug therapy, recent studies and guest expert topics, helping clinicians apply pharmacotherapy evidence in the emergency department. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** en-US | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://pharm-so-hard.com/ **Tags:** emergency-pharmacy, pharmacotherapy, hospital-pharmacy, critical-care, emergency-medicine ## Books ### 1. Fundamentals of Pharmacognosy and Phytotherapy (4th Edition) **Author:** Michael Heinrich, Joanne Barnes, José M. Prieto-Garcia, Simon Gibbons, Elizabeth M. Williamson University pharmacy textbook covering plant chemistry, drug discovery from natural products, extraction and quality control, and the clinical evidence for major herbal drugs by body system. Equips readers to read a phytotherapy monograph and judge its pharmacological basis. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0323834345?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** pharmacognosy, phytotherapy, natural-products, herbal-medicine, pharmacology ### 2. Rang & Dale's Pharmacology **Author:** Humphrey P. Rang, Maureen M. Dale, James M. Ritter, Rod J. Flower, Graeme Henderson A standard medical school textbook that builds from receptor theory and cellular mechanisms up to the drugs used in each body system. Working through it gives you a mechanistic account of why each drug class produces its therapeutic and adverse effects. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0702034711?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, health-medicine, medical-sciences ### 3. Katzung Basic & Clinical **Author:** Bertram G. Katzung, Susan B. Masters, Anthony J. Trevor The eleventh edition of the LANGE pharmacology text, organized by autonomic, cardiovascular, CNS, chemotherapeutic, and endocrine drug groups. It connects basic mechanism to prescribing decisions, so you can justify drug selection, dosing, and predicted toxicity in a clinical case. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071604057?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, health-medicine, medicine--anatomy ## Courses ### 1. Pharmacology Covers routes of administration and ADME, then uses concentration-time data to derive volume of distribution, half-life, and clearance, moving on to in vitro ADME assays and the PK/PD reasoning used to predict dose size and frequency for a candidate compound. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/pharmacokinetics **Tags:** courses, health-medicine, medicine--anatomy ### 2. Drug Discovery The University of California San Diego, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Drug Discovery course brings you lectures from both faculty and industry experts. With this course, recorded on campus at UCSD, we seek to share our access to top people in the field who bring an unprecedented range of expertise on drug discovery. In this course you will learn the drug discovery process up to the filing of an Initial New Drug Application or IND. Each week you will learn the steps that a pharmaceutical or biotech company goes through to discover a new therapeutic drug. In this course you will be able to: * Understand the pharmaceutical and biotechnology market a changing landscape * Learn the major aspects of the drug discovery process, starting with target selection, to compound screening to designing lead candidates. * Recognize current modern drug discovery based on the lock-and-key theory, which attempts to use one single compound to hit one target to combat the related disease. * Increase understanding of the various drug discovery tools and methods that are used for finding, identifying and designing a new drug. * Define and understand the regulatory responsibilities for drug discovery to file an Investigational New Drug Application (IND). This course is intended as part 1 of a series: Drug Discovery, Drug Development (https://www.coursera.org/learn/drug-development) and Drug Commercialization (https://www.coursera.org/learn/drug-commercialization). We would highly recommend that you take the courses in order since it will give you a better understanding on how a drug is discovered in the lab before being tested in clinical trials and then launched in the market place. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Duration:** 3-4 hours/week | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/drug-discovery **Tags:** courses, engineering-manufacturing, biotechnology --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/pharmacology