Opportunities to minimise risk in drug discovery and development

Abstract

The last decade has seen great advances in defining the molecular components of physiological pathways with the sequencing of the human genome and advances in protein structure analysis. However, these advances have yet to drive an increase in drug discovery productivity. The promise of these advances will begin to be realised as the gap is narrowed for understanding how the composition and structure of biochemical pathways work to provide robust, selective functional responses. This understanding will create new opportunities to discover optimal biochemical pharmacological mechanisms of drug action.

Keywords::

• drug discovery
• mechanism
• risk
• targets

Acknowledgements

The author thanks M Bradshaw and M Milla for critical review of the manuscript.