Informatics in pharmaceutical Research

Abstract

The traditional role of information technology (IT) in pharmaceutical R&D has been facilitating cycle compression, i.e., speeding up the time-to-market and increasing the return on R&D investments. In the post-genomic era, the great surge in data creates additional challenges and roles for IT. A new profile of the R&D pipeline is taking shape, based on the concept of massively parallel operations in Discovery research (target discovery and development, high throughput screening and lead optimization). This increase in opportunities, however, must be tempered with the realization that the later stages of R&D are most costly as viewed from the tracking of a particular molecular entity through the pipeline. Evolving in silico technologies to selectively encourage early attrition of the pipeline, i.e., by exploiting advances at the interface of chemistry, biology, and systems engineering (systems biology), are important parts of the modern landscape for pharmaceutical informatics. The presentation will highlight the observation that concepts from process systems engineering are especially relevant for organizing both scientific and management principles.