Glossary Terms

The stage where a drug is first tested for whether it actually works—in a few hundred patients with the target

The first time a drug is tested in humans—focused on safety and dosing, not whether it works.Phase I clinical trials

A major inflammation signal—one of the first alarm molecules your immune system releases when it detects a threat.Tumor necrosis factor

An enzyme that breaks down peptides by cutting their amino acid chains—the main reason most peptides have short half-lives.Peptidases (proteases)

An immune cell that learns to recognize specific threats and either kills infected cells directly or coordinates the broader immune

Any unwanted medical occurrence during a study—whether or not it was actually caused by the treatment.An adverse event (AE) is

How fast your body eliminates a drug from your bloodstream—measured in volume per time.Clearance (CL) represents the volume of plasma

The European Union’s drug regulator—the EU equivalent of the FDA.The EMA evaluates and supervises medicines across the European Economic Area.

The lowest concentration of an antimicrobial compound that stops visible bacterial growth overnight.MIC is the standard laboratory measure of antimicrobial

An enzyme that ships in a switched-off state and gets activated later by a chemical cut that removes an inhibitory