Glossary.
The vocabulary behind every mechanism on this site, drawn from the drug library and defined both plainly and precisely.
A
- Agonist
- A drug that flips a switch ON, mimicking a signal the body already sends itself.
- Analog
- A lab-made copy of a natural body chemical, tweaked to work better or last longer.
- Antagonist
- A drug that flips a switch OFF, blocking a natural body signal from getting through.
- Antibody
- A Y-shaped immune protein that locks onto a specific target, like a key fitting one lock.
- Antibody-drug conjugate
- An antibody with a chemotherapy drug attached, so it acts like a delivery truck straight to the target cells.
- Antigen
- The exact target an antibody, or an engineered immune cell, is designed to grab onto.
- ATPase
- A tiny cellular pump, powered by the body's own energy currency, that moves substances in or out of a cell.
- Autologous
- Made from your own cells — taken from you, modified in a lab, then given back to you.
B
- Biologic
- A drug made from living cells rather than synthesized in a chemistry lab, usually a large molecule like an antibody.
- Bispecific antibody
- An antibody engineered to grab two different things at the same time — a molecular bridge.
- Blocker
- Another word for a drug that blocks a signal or channel from working.
C
- Calcium channel
- A tiny gateway in a cell's wall that controls calcium flow — key to how muscles, including the heart, contract.
- CAR-T cell therapy
- Your own immune cells, re-engineered in a lab to recognize and attack a specific target, then infused back into you.
- Cas9
- The actual scissors protein in CRISPR — it does the cutting once guided to the right spot in the DNA.
- Checkpoint inhibitor
- A drug that releases the brakes the immune system normally holds itself back with, letting it attack cancer more freely.
- CRISPR
- Molecular scissors that can find one exact spot in DNA and cut it — used to switch a gene off or fix it.
D
- Decoy receptor
- A fake target that intercepts and mops up a harmful signal before it reaches where it's actually headed.
F
- Fab fragment
- Just the business end of an antibody, the part that actually grabs the target, used on its own.
- Fusion protein
- A drug built by fusing pieces of two different proteins together into one hybrid molecule.
G
- Gene editing
- Directly rewriting a specific piece of DNA, rather than just adding new instructions alongside it.
H
- Hormone
- A chemical messenger the body releases into the blood to send instructions to other parts of the body.
I
- Inhibitor
- A drug that slows down or shuts off one specific process in the body.
- Integrin
- A protein on a cell's surface that acts like Velcro, letting it grip onto other cells or tissue.
K
- Kinase
- An enzyme that acts like an on-switch for other proteins, often telling cells to grow or divide.
L
- Ligand
- Anything that binds to a target, like a key fitting a lock — the concept this whole site is named after.
M
- Modulator
- A drug that fine-tunes a process, dialing it up or down instead of flipping a simple on/off switch.
- Monoclonal antibody
- A lab-made copy of an immune antibody, engineered to lock onto one exact target.
- mRNA
- A set of lab-made instructions a cell reads to build a piece of a virus, so the immune system learns to recognize it.
P
- Payload
- The actual cargo drug an antibody carries and drops off at its target.
- Peptide
- A small chain of building blocks, shorter than a full protein, often the basis for lab-made drugs that mimic natural hormones.
- Polymerase
- The copying machine a cell (or a virus) uses to duplicate its genetic material.
- Protease
- A pair of molecular scissors that cuts proteins into the working pieces a cell or virus actually needs.
- Proton pump
- The acid pump in your stomach lining — blocking it means your stomach makes less acid.
R
- Receptor
- A cell's docking station — where a signal like a hormone or drug attaches to tell the cell what to do.
- Reductase
- An enzyme that helps build a specific substance in the body — statins work by blocking one involved in making cholesterol.
- Reuptake inhibitor
- A drug that keeps a mood-related brain chemical hanging around longer instead of being reabsorbed right away.
- Reverse transcriptase
- A viral enzyme that rewrites the virus's genetic code from RNA into DNA so it can hide inside a human cell.
S
- Serotonin
- A brain chemical involved in regulating mood.
- Small molecule
- A simple, lab-synthesized compound, small enough to be absorbed as a pill and get inside cells easily.
T
- Tyrosine kinase inhibitor
- A drug that jams a specific growth-switch enzyme that some cancer cells depend on to multiply.