With publication of the human genome has come an experiment in reductionism for drug discovery. With the evaluation of the number and quality of new drug treatments from this approach has come a reevaluation of target-based versus systems-based strategies. Pharmacology, historically rooted in systems-based approaches and designed to give systems-independent measures of drug activity, is suitably poised to be a major (if not the major) tool in this new environment of drug discovery. Compared to the first edition, this book now expands discussion of tools and ideas revolving around allosteric drug action. This is an increasingly therapeutically relevant subject in pharmacology as new drug screening utilizes cell function for discovery of new drug entities
