RECENT ADVANCES IN THE STUDY OF BIOLOGICAL COMPETITION BETWEEN STRUCTURALLY RELATED COMPOUNDS

Abstract

This is a review supplementary to those which had brought the subject up to date in the summer of 1945. The toxicity of the drug pyrithiamine resulting from its competition with its structural analog, the metabolite thia-mine, is described in detail as a typical instance, and a table of 40 such pairs, including the older known cases, is given. The topics discussed include the reversal of the drugs'' injurious effects by an excess of the analogous metabolite, the dependence of antagonistic action on nutritional requirement, the gradations of antagonistic action of analogs, hypotheses concerning mechanism, competition between structurally dissimilar compounds, competition between structurally analogous drugs, applications to pharmacology, applications to biochemistry, some relationships of structure to antagonistic activity.