Recent from talks
Nothing was collected or created yet.
Intrinsic activity
View on Wikipedia

This article needs attention from an expert in pharmacology. The specific problem is: There are mistakes in this article; efficacy and intrinsic activity are different properties. (April 2019) |
Intrinsic activity (IA) and maximal efficacy (Emax) refer to the relative ability of a drug-receptor complex to produce a maximum functional response. This must be distinguished from the affinity, which is a measure of the ability of the drug to bind to its molecular target, and the EC50, which is a measure of the potency of the drug and which is proportional to both efficacy and affinity. This use of the word "efficacy" was introduced by Stephenson (1956)[1] to describe the way in which agonists vary in the response they produce, even when they occupy the same number of receptors. High efficacy agonists can produce the maximal response of the receptor system while occupying a relatively low proportion of the receptors in that system. There is a distinction between efficacy and intrinsic activity.[clarification needed]
Mechanism of efficacy
[edit]| Ligand | Description | % Efficacy (E) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Superagonist | Efficacy higher than the endogenous agonist | E | > | 100 | ||
| Full agonist | Efficacy equal to the endogenous agonist | E | = | 100 | ||
| Partial agonist | Efficacy less than the endogenous agonist | 0 | < | E | < | 100 |
| Silent antagonist | Affinity but no efficacy | E | = | 0 | ||
| Inverse agonist | Inverse efficacy | E | < | 0 | ||
Agonists of lower efficacy are not as efficient at producing a response from the drug-bound receptor, by stabilizing the active form of the drug-bound receptor. Therefore, they may not be able to produce the same maximal response, even when they occupy the entire receptor population, as the efficiency of transformation of the inactive form of the drug-receptor complex to the active drug-receptor complex may not be high enough to evoke a maximal response. Since the observed response may be less than maximal in systems with no spare receptor reserve, some low efficacy agonists are referred to as partial agonists.[2] However, it is worth bearing in mind that these terms are relative - even partial agonists may appear as full agonists in a different system/experimental setup, as when the number of receptors increases, there may be enough drug-receptor complexes for a maximum response to be produced, even with individually low efficacy of transducing the response. There are actually relatively few true full agonists or silent antagonists; many compounds usually considered to be full agonists (such as DOI) are more accurately described as high efficacy partial agonists, as a partial agonist with efficacy over ≈80-90% is indistinguishable from a full agonist in most assays. Similarly many antagonists (such as naloxone) are in fact partial agonists or inverse agonists, but with very low efficacy (less than 10%). Compounds considered partial agonists tend to have efficacy in between this range. Another case is represented by silent agonists,[3] which are ligands that can place a receptor, typically an ion channel, into a desensitized state with little or no apparent activation of it, forming a complex that can subsequently generate currents when treated with an allosteric modulator.[4]
Intrinsic activity
[edit]Intrinsic activity of a test agonist is defined as:
- [5]: 24
Stevenson's efficacy
[edit]R. P. Stephenson (1925–2004) was a British pharmacologist.[6] Efficacy has historically been treated as a proportionality constant between the binding of the drug and the generation of the biological response.[7] Stephenson defined efficacy as:
- [5]: 25
where is the proportion of agonist-bound receptors (given by the Hill equation) and is the stimulus to the biological system.[8] The response is generated by an unknown function , which is assumed to be hyperbolic.[8] This model was arguably flawed in that it did not incorporate the equilibrium between the inactivated agonist-bound-receptor and the activated agonist-bound-receptor that is shown in the del Castillo Katz model.
Furchgott's efficacy
[edit]Robert F. Furchgott later improved on Stephenson's model with the definition of efficacy, e, as
where is the intrinsic efficacy and is the total concentration of receptors.
Stevenson and Furchgott's models of efficacy have been criticised and many more have been developed. The models of efficacy are shown in Bindslev (2008).[9][10]
References
[edit]- ^ Stephenson RP (December 1956). "A modification of receptor theory". British Journal of Pharmacology and Chemotherapy. 11 (4): 379–393. doi:10.1111/j.1476-5381.1956.tb00006.x. PMC 1510558. PMID 13383117.
- ^ "In vitro pharmacology: concentration-response curves". Glaxo Wellcome pharmacology guide. Archived from the original on 2019-07-26. Retrieved 2009-07-11.
- ^ Chojnacka K, Papke RL, Horenstein NA (July 2013). "Synthesis and evaluation of a conditionally-silent agonist for the α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor". Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters. 23 (14): 4145–4149. doi:10.1016/j.bmcl.2013.05.039. PMC 3882203. PMID 23746476.
- ^ Quadri M, Matera C, Silnović A, Pismataro MC, Horenstein NA, Stokes C, et al. (August 2017). "Identification of α7 Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor Silent Agonists Based on the Spirocyclic Quinuclidine-Δ2 -Isoxazoline Scaffold: Synthesis and Electrophysiological Evaluation". ChemMedChem. 12 (16): 1335–1348. doi:10.1002/cmdc.201700162. PMC 5573630. PMID 28494140.
- ^ a b Foreman JC, Johansen T, Gibb AJ (2009). Textbook of Receptor Pharmacology (Second ed.). CRC Press. ISBN 9781439887578.
- ^ "R P ('Steve') Stephenson". Pharmacology Hall of Fame. British Pharmacological Society. 2 June 2016.
- ^ Brunton L, Chabner BA, Knollman B (2011). Goodman and Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics (12th ed.). p. 46.
- ^ a b c Linderman JJ (2000). "Kinetic Modeling Approaches to Understanding Ligand Efficacy". In Kenakin T, Angus JA (eds.). The Pharmacology of Functional, Biochemical, and Recombinant Receptor Systems. Berlin: Springer. p. 120. ISBN 978-3-540-66124-5.
- ^ Bindslev N (2008). "Chapter 1: Simple Agonism". Drug-Acceptor Interactions: Modeling Theoretical Tools to Test and Evaluate Experimental Equilibrium Effects. London: CRC Press. pp. 19–20. doi:10.4324/9781315159782. ISBN 978-91-977071-0-7.
- ^ Kirkeby H (2017). "Drug–Acceptor Interactions–Modeling theoretical tools to test and evaluate experimental equilibrium effects (Book review)". Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease. 20 (4). London: Routledge: 213. doi:10.1080/08910600802431931. ISBN 978-1-351-66057-0. S2CID 83584731.
Intrinsic activity
View on GrokipediaFundamentals
Definition
In pharmacology, intrinsic activity, denoted as α or IA, measures the relative capacity of a drug-receptor complex to produce a maximal functional response compared to a full agonist in the same biological system. It is defined as the ratio of the maximum response elicited by the test agonist (E_max,test) to the maximum response elicited by a full agonist (E_max,full):This parameter, introduced by E. J. Ariëns in 1954 as part of the theory of competitive inhibition, quantifies the drug's inherent ability to activate the receptor and generate a stimulus upon binding, independent of binding affinity.[7] Over time, the concept has evolved to emphasize this relative efficacy in experimental contexts, though it remains system-dependent.[8] The value of intrinsic activity classifies ligands as follows: full agonists achieve the system's maximum response and thus have α = 1; partial agonists produce a submaximal response with 0 < α < 1; competitive antagonists bind without activating the receptor, yielding α = 0; and in systems exhibiting constitutive receptor activity, inverse agonists stabilize inactive conformations, resulting in α < 0.[9][3] Intrinsic activity reflects relative efficacy, the broader property denoting a ligand's capacity to shift receptors toward active states and elicit responses.[8] In contrast, potency describes the concentration dependence of the response, typically via the EC_{50} value.[10]
Relation to Efficacy and Potency
Efficacy refers to the absolute capacity of a receptor-ligand complex to initiate and propagate downstream signaling events, representing the intrinsic ability of the agonist to convert receptor occupancy into a biological response.[11] In contrast, intrinsic activity (IA) serves as a relative measure, quantifying the maximal response elicited by a test agonist as a fraction of the response produced by a reference full agonist under identical conditions, typically expressed as a value between 0 and 1.[4] This normalization distinguishes IA from absolute efficacy, allowing comparisons across ligands while accounting for system-specific variations in receptor density or coupling efficiency. Potency describes the concentration of an agonist required to achieve half of its maximal effect, commonly denoted as the EC50 value, and is a composite property shaped by both the ligand's affinity for the receptor and its efficacy or IA.[11] Affinity, measured by the dissociation constant Kd, quantifies the binding strength between the ligand and receptor without implying activation, serving as a prerequisite for but distinct from the post-binding activation captured by IA.[12] Qualitatively, potency is proportional to the product of affinity and efficacy, such that improvements in either binding tightness or signaling activation can enhance the observed potency.[6] For instance, a ligand with high IA—indicating strong relative activation potential—may exhibit low potency if its affinity is poor, requiring higher concentrations to occupy sufficient receptors for a detectable effect.[13] Conversely, partial agonists, which possess lower IA compared to full agonists, often display reduced maximal responses despite potentially comparable potency.[12] Notably, although normalized to a reference agonist, IA remains system-dependent, varying with experimental context such as receptor expression levels, which affects cross-system ligand comparisons.[4]Historical Development
Ariëns' Intrinsic Activity
Everhardus J. Ariëns (1918–2002), a Dutch pharmacologist, introduced the concept of intrinsic activity in 1954 as part of his work on competitive inhibition and drug-receptor interactions. In his paper "Affinity and intrinsic activity in the theory of competitive inhibition," published in Arzneimittel-Forschung, Ariëns separated the pharmacological effects of drugs into affinity (related to binding strength, denoted by the dissociation constant ) and intrinsic activity (α, the ability of the bound drug to activate the receptor and produce a response).[3] Intrinsic activity α is defined as the maximal response produced by the drug relative to a full agonist, typically ranging from 0 (antagonists) to 1 (full agonists), with partial agonists having 0 < α < 1. This allowed for quantitative explanation of why drugs with similar affinity could elicit varying maximal effects, addressing limitations in earlier occupancy theories that assumed response proportional to receptor occupancy. Ariëns' framework was pivotal in classifying agonists and antagonists, influencing drug design and understanding partial agonism in systems like smooth muscle responses to sympathomimetics.[1]Stephenson's Efficacy Concept
Robert P. Stephenson (1925–2004), a British pharmacologist, introduced the concept of efficacy as a key innovation in receptor theory through his 1956 paper "A Modification of Receptor Theory," published in the British Journal of Pharmacology.[14] This work built on earlier models, including Ariëns' intrinsic activity, by proposing that drug action involves not only binding affinity but also an additional property determining response magnitude. Stephenson defined efficacy, denoted as , as the ratio of the stimulus —which represents the magnitude of the tissue response or effect—to the fractional receptor occupancy , given by the equationHere, is calculated using the fractional occupancy formula
where is the agonist concentration and is the equilibrium dissociation constant of the agonist-receptor complex. This formulation quantifies the intrinsic capacity of the drug-receptor complex to generate a stimulus per unit of occupancy, explaining why agonists can elicit different maximal responses despite equivalent binding; for example, full agonists produce large stimuli even at low occupancy, while partial agonists yield smaller ones.[15] The concept addresses a critical limitation in prior theories, such as those assuming response is directly proportional to occupancy, by highlighting that not all bound ligands equally activate receptors or downstream signaling. However, Stephenson's model assumes a linear relationship between stimulus and occupancy, treating as directly scaling with without amplification steps.[16] It also does not account for receptor reserve, where full tissue responses can arise from partial occupancy due to excess receptors, or for equilibrium activation states involving conformational changes.[16] Stephenson's efficacy provided a foundational measure of agonism related to Ariëns' intrinsic activity, offering an absolute scale that complemented relative comparisons of agonist stimuli to reference full agonists.[15]