Interdisciplinary approaches to drug discovery An academic approach

Abstract

AbstractDrug discovery has traditionally been based on a process of molecular roulette in which large numbers of compounds are tested for biological activity in animals. This is slow and expensive, and does not have very good odds for success. Typically, introduction of a new drug costs $100m–200m in research and development, and only about 40 new chemical entities are introduced each year despite an estimated $20 000m annual expenditure on pharmaceutical research worldwide. Increasingly, research on drug discovery involves highly integrated interdisciplinary teams, and the use of modern technology. Three themes can be discerned in drug discovery research: computer aided drug design, development of new therapeutic targets, and exploitation of new sources of lead compounds. Most benefits will result from synergistic interactions between these three themes. Computer based drug design can focus either on postulated targets or on postulated lead compounds. Although gene cloning provides a vast database of seq...