Pharmaceutical research, in schools of pharmacy and in the laboratories of the pharmaceutical manufacturing houses, embraces the organic chemical synthesis of new chemical agents for use as drugs and is also concerned with the isolation and purification of plant constituents that might be useful as drugs. Research in pharmacy also includes formulation of dosage forms of medicaments and study of their stability, methods of assay, and standardization.

Another facet of pharmaceutical research that has attracted wide medical attention is the “availability” to the body (bioavailability) of various dosage forms of drugs. Exact methods of determining levels of drugs in blood and organs have revealed that slight changes in the mode of manufacture or the incorporation of a small amount of inert ingredient in a tablet may diminish or completely prevent its absorption from the gastrointestinal tract, thus nullifying the action of the drug. Ingenious methods have been devised to test the bioavailability of dosage forms. Although such in vitro, or test-tube, methods are useful and indicative, the ultimate test of bioavailability is the patient’s response to the dosage form of the drug.

Licensing systems for new medicinal products in Europe and North America demand extensive and increasingly costly investigation and testing in the laboratory and in clinical trials to establish the efficacy and safety of new products in relation to the claims to be made for their use. Proprietary rights for innovation by the grant of patents and by the registration of trademarks have become increasingly important in the growth of the pharmaceutical industry and its development internationally.

The results of research in pharmacy are usually published in such journals as the Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology (London), the Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association and the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences (Washington, D.C.), the American Journal of Pharmacy and the American Journal of Hospital Pharmacy (Philadelphia), and the Pharmaceutica Acta Helvetiae (Zürich).