Reader response: Financial relationships between neurologists and industry: The 2015 Open Payments database

Ethics in the financial and investment industry are crucial for maintaining trust and credibility in a profession historically prone to ethical vulnerabilities. Periodic scandals have eroded public confidence, prompting legal reforms. These reforms underscore the need for transparency and accountability in financial practices, but due to its inherent complexities, the profession remains vulnerable to ethical breakdowns.
One major challenge is the high temptation to engage in unethical behavior,...

Agonists can bind with and activate receptors, resulting in the formation of drug-receptor complexes. Once formed, these complexes catalyze many biochemical processes at the cellular level and subsequently induce a pharmacologic response. The degree of response is directly proportional to the fraction of activated receptors, which in turn, depends on the concentration of the drug at the receptor site as well as the sensitivity of the receptor. An increase in the administered dose contributes to...

The potency of a drug is the measure of its ability to produce a biological response and can be compared by looking at the half-maximum effective concentration or EC50 values of different drugs. A lower EC50 value indicates higher potency of the drug. In the dose–response curve of two antihypertensive drugs, candesartan and irbesartan, a significant difference is observed in their EC50 values. A lower EC50 value for candesartan indicates that it is more potent than irbesartan, as it...

Drugs exert their therapeutic effects by interacting with receptors, enzymes, or ion channels that are present throughout the human body. The strength and duration of the interaction between a drug and its target receptor are characterized by the selectivity and specificity of the drug. Selectivity refers to a drug's strong preference for its intended target over other targets. For instance, isoprenaline, a non-selective β-adrenergic agonist, interacts with both β1- and...

The microplate reader is a multimodal instrument that allows for a variety of experiments to be performed and measured simultaneously. Microplate readers can make absorbance, fluorescence and luminescence measurements. Multiwell plates are integral to the microplate reader and allow for many experiments to be performed at once. Regardless of the assay type, experiments on the plate reader utilize a standard curve to determine the experimental values. This curve uses samples of known...

A thoracic oncology database was developed to serve as a comprehensive repository for clinical and laboratory data for the purposes of translational research. The database will serve translational cancer researchers within the Thoracic Oncology Research Program. This database is adaptable to other cancer models, as well as other human...