Drug discovery
hideIn the fields of medicine, biotechnology and pharmacology, drug discovery is the process by which drugs are discovered and/or designed.
In the past most drugs have been discovered either by identifying the active ingredient from traditional remedies or by serendipitous discovery. A new approach has been to understand how disease and infection are controlled at the molecular and physiological level and to target specific entities based on this knowledge.
The process of drug discovery involves the identification of candidates, synthesis, characterization, screening, and assays for therapeutic efficacy. Once a compound has shown its value in these tests, it will begin the process of drug development prior to clinical trials.
Despite advances in technology and understanding of biological systems, drug discovery is still a lengthy, "expensive, difficult, and inefficient process" with low rate of new therapeutic discovery. Information on the human genome, its sequence and what it encodes has been hailed as a potential windfall for drug discovery, promising to virtually eliminate the bottleneck in therapeutic targets that has been one limiting factor on the rate of therapeutic discovery.[citation needed] However, data indicates that "new targets" as opposed to "established targets" are more prone to drug discovery project failure in general[citation needed] This data corroborates some thinking underlying a pharmaceutical industry trend beginning at the turn of the twenty-first century and continuing today which finds more risk aversion in target selection among multi-national pharmaceutical companies.[citation needed]
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News tagged with drug discovery
Tiny injector to speed development of new, safer, cheaper drugs
Chemistry / Analytical Chemistry
Nov 04, 2009 |
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It's no bigger than a stamp packet but it has the potential to allow rapid development of a new generation of drugs and genetic engineering organisms, and to better control in-vitro fertilization.
New chemical reaction offers opportunities for drug development
Nov 12, 2009 |
5 / 5 (2) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at University College Dublin have solved a chemistry problem which has stumped researchers worldwide for more than a decade. The results have earned the group the cover story of the leading scientific ...
Search results for drug discovery
Drunken fruit flies help scientists find potential drug target for alcoholism
Nov 03, 2009 |
3.7 / 5 (3) |
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A group of drunken fruit flies have helped researchers from North Carolina State and Boston universities identify entire networks of genes—also present in humans—that play a key role in alcohol drinking behavior. This discovery, ...
Discovery leads to effective treatment of painful skin condition
Nov 24, 2009 |
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Researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute, in collaboration with a worldwide group of physicians and scientists, have discovered a remarkable treatment for a rare, yet debilitating, skin condition.
Researchers design new strategy to find drugs to treat neglected infection
Nov 03, 2009 |
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Using an unconventional approach that they designed, University of Pittsburgh drug discoverers and their collaborators at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research have identified compounds that hold promise for treating leishmaniasis, ...
Discovery in worms points to more targeted cancer treatment
Nov 10, 2009 |
5 / 5 (2) |
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Researchers at Queen's University have found a link between two genes involved in cancer formation in humans, by examining the genes in worms. The groundbreaking discovery provides a foundation for how tumor-forming ...
New chemical reaction offers opportunities for drug development
Nov 26, 2009 |
5 / 5 (1) |
2
Researchers led by Conway Fellow, Professor Pat Guiry have solved a chemistry problem that has stumped researchers worldwide for more than a decade. The results have earned the group the cover story of the leading scientific ...
Study reveals why certain drug combinations backfire
Nov 13, 2009 |
4.5 / 5 (4) |
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Combination drug therapy has become a staple for treating many infections. For instance, doctors treat extensively drug resistant forms of tuberculosis with one drug that breaks down the pathogen's protective barriers and ...
New imagining technique could lead to better antibiotics and cancer drugs
Nov 09, 2009 |
5 / 5 (4) |
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A recently devised method of imaging the chemical communication and warfare between microorganisms could lead to new antibiotics, antifungal, antiviral and anti-cancer drugs, said a Texas AgriLife Research scientist.
Researchers Begin to Decipher Metabolism of Sexual Assault Drug
Nov 19, 2009 |
4 / 5 (1) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- It’s a naturally occurring brain chemical with an unwieldy name: 4-hydroxybutyrate (4-HB). Taken by mouth, it can be abused or used as a date-rape drug.
Researchers 'notch' a victory toward new kind of cancer drug
Nov 11, 2009 |
4 / 5 (4) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have devised an innovative way to disarm a key protein considered to be "undruggable," meaning that all previous efforts to develop a drug against it have failed. Their discovery, published in ...
Study points to new uses, unexpected side effects of already existing drugs
Nov 04, 2009 |
5 / 5 (3) |
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Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine and the University of California, San Francisco have developed and experimentally tested a technique to predict new target diseases ...
List of search results for drug discovery
