The Modern Drug Discovery Process

From a humanitarian perspective, a market-driven approach to drug development often leaves unaddressed the diseases of less-developed nations. Nations with a low per capita income are less able to contribute to an economically profitable drug. Some scientists have attempted to address this situation. For example, Dennis Liotta of Emory University spearheaded the creation of iThemba Pharmaceuticals in 2009 in Johannesburg, South Africa. iThemba specifically targets novel treatments for HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, three exceptionally common diseases in Africa.3 

The following Case Study describes the development of an effective drug for acid reflux, highlights the profitability of such a drug, and demonstrates how quickly competing companies create their own therapies. 

Absent of outside factors, a pharmaceutical company typically addresses diseases affecting large numbers of patients. The size of the market is estimated based on studies of demographic and medical information. Once a disease with a favorable market has been selected, the decision is passed along to the molecular biology team. 

The next two Case Studies demonstrate typical factors that pharmaceutical companies consider when selecting a drug target. 

Later drugs included enalapril (Vasotec, 2.10) and fosinopril (Monopril, 2.11). ACE inhibitors quickly displaced /3-blockers as the leading antihypertensive drugs in the 1980s.4 

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Now, let us have a look at the summary of the traditional as well as the modern drug discovery processes involving natural products. 

As combinatorial chemistry has been fully integrated into the modern drug discovery process, more computational search methodologies against large virtual combinatorial compound spaces have been steadily developed in recent years (11-16). A detailed summary and comparison of those published methods are reported in the Section 5 and in Table 13.6. A good review on this subject could also be found in the publication by Boehm and coworkers (16). 

Medicinal Chemistry The Modern Drug Discovery Process... 

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