Drug development post COVID-19 pandemic: toward a better system to meet current and future global health challenges

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Despite advances in drug research and development, our knowledge of the underlying molecular mechanisms of many diseases remains inadequate. This have led to limited effective medicines for several diseases. To address these challenges, efficient strategies, novel technologies, and policies are urgently needed. The main obstacles in drug discovery and development are the mounting cost, risk, and time frame needed to develop new medicines. Fair pricing and accessibility is another unmet global challenge.

Areas covered: Here, the authors cover the pace, risks, cost, and challenges facing drug development processes. Additionally, they introduce disease-associated data which demand global attention and propose solutions to overcome these challenges.

Expert opinion: The massive challenges encountered during drug development urgently call for a serious global rethinking of the way this process is done. A partial solution might be if many consortiums of multi-nations, academic institutions, clinicians, pharma companies, and funding agencies gather at different fronts to crowdsource resources, share knowledge and risks. Such an ecosystem can rapidly generate first-in-class molecules that are safe, effective, and affordable. We think that this article represents a wake-up call for the scientific community to immediately reassess the current drug discovery and development procedures.

KEYWORDS:

• Alzheimer’s disease
• cancer
• clinical trials
• COVID-19
• drug development
• drug failure
• effective drugs
• infectious diseases
• malaria
• rare diseases

Article highlights

• Patients desperately want effective affordable drugs and they want them quickly.

• Drug development needs massive changes in the currently followed procedures.

• Despite the advancement of technology, there are many unmet needs for the treatment of many diseases including infectious diseases, CNS diseases, Alzheimer’s, rare diseases and cancer.

• Despite the alarming pace of serious diseases, the drug development community has not yet embraced pooling the crowd sources of science to implement new reforms in drug development.

• Lack of enough global alliance, secrecy, duplication of efforts, cost, pace and reproducibility elements are among the mitigating factors that need to be addressed.

This box summarizes key points contained in the article.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the Research Funding Department at the University of Sharjah [Grant number: 1801110125-P] and the Aljalila Foundation [Grant number: AJF 202058] for funding this project.