Applications of biotechnology to pharmacology and toxicology.

Strategies for the development of new more efficient drugs at a lower cost and for the evaluation of the effects of chemicals and metals on tissue and cell function are changing considerably. This is made possible by recent progress in various areas, particularly biotechnology and bioinformatics. The recent sequencing of the human genome and the design of more and more sophisticated technologies will largely influence the fields of pharmacology and toxicology. Thus, identification of new molecular targets, development of more powerful cell models, design of miniaturized and automated tests for high throughput screening of thousands of compounds synthesized by combinatorial chemistry and progress in genomic and proteomic technologies that permit simultaneous analysis of thousands of genes and their products, offer new investigative ways that will still widely be extended in the next future.