Guide to Receptors and Channels (GRAC)

The great proliferation of drug targets in recent years has driven the need to organise and condense the information in a logical way. This is the underlying reason for this Guide to Receptors and Channels (GRAC), distributed with the British Journal of Pharmacology. Our intent is to produce an authoritative but user-friendly publication, which allows a rapid overview of the key properties of a wide range of established or potential pharmacological targets. The aim is to provide information succinctly so that a newcomer to a particular target group can identify the main elements "at a glance".

Targets have been selected for inclusion where there is sufficient pharmacological information to allow clear definition or where, in our view, there is clear interest in this molecular class from the pharmacological community. The underlying philosophy has been to present data on human receptors and to describe agents that represent the most selective available (either by donation or from commercial sources), now or in the near future.

The Guide is divided into seven sections, which comprise pharmacological targets of similar structure/function. These are 7TM receptors, transmitter-gated channels, ion channels, catalytic receptors, nuclear receptors, transporters and enzymes.