Drugs for a New Millennium

A millennium, a century, even a decade is a long time frame for speculation about anything. Advances in biomedical research in the last few decades have been so extraordinary and escalating at an ever-accelerating pace that any prophecy is a risky proposition. However, it is possible to divine the big unanswered questions and envisage ways in which they might reasonably be approached in the next few decades, a task which I will try to essay. 

So many drugs treat so many different medical conditions that a detailed and comprehensive coverage would likely be tiresome. Instead, I will address certain broad themes and diseases that offer both immense challenges and great potential for advances. Rather than review detailed experimental issues, I will confine myself to the big picture issues, providing examples of specific research only in a few instances, drawing largely from areas I know best. 

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Barke, S.A. and Khossravi, D., Drug delivery strategies for the new millennium, Drug... 

Cupid, B. C., and Gamer, R. C. (1998). Accelerator mass spectrometry—A new tool for dmg metabolism studies. In Drug Metabolism Towards the Next Millennium (Gooderham, N. J., Ed.). Ion Press, Amsterdam, pp. 175-187. 

Since then, Meyler s Side Effects of Drugs has been published every four years, providing an encyclopaedic survey of the entire field. Had the cycle been adhered to, the 15th edition would have been published in 2004, but over successive editions the quantity and nature of the information available in the text has changed. In the new millennium it was clear that for this edition a revolutionary approach was needed, and that has taken a little longer to achieve, with a great deal of effort from many different individuals. 

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