Pharmaceutical industry drug discovery process

Influencing the efficacy or potency of chemicals is a strategy used by the pharmaceutical industry as part of the drug discovery process that can be incorporated into designing safer industrial chemicals. Efficacy is the maximal effect, either therapeutic or toxic, that a chemical can achieve. Potency is a measure of the amount of a substance that is needed to attain a given response level. Opioid analgesics are examples of where structural modifications have been used to establish a relationship between structure and activity. ... 

The objective for Medicinal Chemistry is the identification of the chemical structures for potential new medicines. Eventually, these new medicines will be launched into the market to address unmet medical needs and to improve the quality of life for all human beings. The marketing of new medicines is the lifeblood of the pharmaceutical industry. Due to the broad impact Medicinal Chemistry has in the drug discovery process, it is recognized as a top job for synthetic organic chemists. 

Patents are of paramount importance to the pharmaceutical industry. At the discovery program level, chemotype patentability is one of the key requirements for continued work on a particular structural class. Decisions by venture capitalists to fund startup companies are based, in part, on the strength of their patent portfolios. The presence or absence of a single key patent can determine the future of even the largest pharmaceutical company. Patents thus are a critical, inseparable component of the drug discovery process. 

As the drug discovery process increased in intensity in the mid- to late 20th century, primarily as a result of the major screening and chemical synthetic efforts in the pharmaceutical industry in industrialized countries worldwide, but also as a result of the biotechnology revolution, the need for increased sophistication and efficacy in (1) how to discover new drugs, (2) how to reproducibly prepare bulk chemicals, (3) how to determine the activity and safety of new drug candidates in preclinical animal models prior to their... 

In the past decade, MS has become an indispensable tool for the pharmaceutical industry at each stage in drug discovery (see Table 4.1 [4]). Primarily, MS has been employed at the drug development stage. However, due to major advances in affinity-based MS technologies, it is readily becoming a common tool for hit identification in the drug discovery process (see Table 4.2 [4]). A common theme... 

The use of in vitro cell culture models for mechanistic studies and as permeability screens for the blood-brain barrier in the pharmaceutical Industry-Background and current status in the drug discovery process. Vascular Pharmacology, 38, 355-364. 

Research spending in the pharmaceutical industry is carried out in the context of considerable interfirm rivalry. 1 emphasized that point in my first article on this topic (Comanor 1964) but provided no formal model of the process. Since that time, there have been more formal discussions of these issues. A particularly lucid one is offered by Cockburn and Henderson (1994), which emphasizes the competitive nature of the drug discovery process. 

Hopefully these approaches pioneered by companies like AZ and Pfizer will have a rapid take-up in the pharmaceutical industry over the next few years leading to a greener drug discovery process. 

In fall 2001, I taught medicinal chemistry for the first time. My training is in synthetic organic chemistry, and I learned many of the class topics about a week before my students. In summer 2002, I attended the Residential School on Medicinal Chemistry at Drew University. The Drew course was a fantastic experience. For me, the value of the course was less about the material and more about seeing practitioners of medicinal chemistry talk about the drug discovery process in their own language. In this textbook, I have tried to be true to the ideas and attitudes that seem inherent to those who are actively involved in the pharmaceutical industry. 

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