Cell Therapy - Falling short of its potential? By Pierre-Louis Joffrin Despite major investment in the field, few cell therapies have gained regulatory approval with limited commercial success. The success of therapeutic products is defined by three factors: safety, efficacy and scalability. Achieving these for cell therapy presents new challenges;… Read More
The Reality of Virtual Pharmaceutical Companies By Dr Stephen Naylor and Dr Kirkwood A. Pritchard Jr We discuss the oxymoronic proposition of a Virtual Pharmaceutical Company (VPC) and the typical adopted business model, as well as provide examples of such companies currently trying to undertake this adventurous task. The vagaries… Read More
Safety First - Automating cell line development By Jon Newman-Smith Developing and maintaining cell cultures in a stable and sterile environment is of paramount importance to protect samples and increase overall success of drug discovery pipelines. Cell lines are extremely fragile and susceptible to contamination which can be catastrophic in… Read More
By Dr Mark Chao, et al. New immunotherapies that integrate innate and adaptive immune responses may increase efficacy against many cancers, and have the potential to expand the range of tumours and patients that can be treated with immunotherapy. Over the past decade, insights into the molecular mechanisms that cancer… Read More
Flow Cytometry - The advanced systems overcoming drug discovery pain points By Helen Stewart-Miller and Dr Richard Massey Flow cytometry is an invaluable technique for the characterisation of highly heterogeneous cell populations. Thanks to improvements in throughput, automation and multichannel detection capabilities, recent years have seen its use expand across… Read More
How Mergers and Acquisitions Will Drive Oncology Research in 2019 By Dr Michael Seiler 2019 got off to a fast start for oncology drug discovery, with numerous mergers, acquisitions and collaborations announced in quick succession. These ventures provide a window into key trends in oncology research, where investigators are likely… Read More
From Genotype to Phenotype: Leveraging functional genomics in oncology By Dr Menelas Pangalos & Steve Rees et al. A challenge in drug discovery is that, at best, only around one in five drug candidates will lead to the launch of a medicine. In 2011, AstraZeneca initiated a strategic ‘5R Framework’… Read More
Integrated Platform Drug Discovery and Development Companies - Part 2: Comparative analysis By Dr Stephen Naylor and Dr Kirkwood A. Pritchard Jr Spring 2019 Large pharmaceutical companies have struggled to efficiently implement tools, technologies and platforms into their drug discovery and development (DDD) programmes. More recently there have been attempts… Read More
Fostering Multidisciplinary Collaboration in Drug Discovery By Professor Zeynep Erden, et al. Drug discovery teams combine specialists with in-depth knowledge from a variety of scientific disciplines. Such diversity in thought worlds poses a challenging exercise in cross-disciplinary collaboration and project coordination. Based on a longitudinal field study of five projects… Read More
3D Organoid Cell Culture - Optimising disease models for research and drug discovery By Dr Amanda Linkous, Hilary Sherman, Iris Li and Dr Richard M. Eglen The use of human-induced pluripotent stem cells (HiPSCs) continues to grow in three-dimensional (3D) spheroid and organoid culture. Although advances in 3D cell culture… Read More
The Evolution of Transdermal Drug Delivery and Treating Migraine By Dr Mahmoud Ameri and Hayley Lewis Transdermal Drug Delivery (TDD) is a promising method for drug application that has major advantages over some of the most common routes of drug administration. In most cases, oral drug delivery is the most… Read More
Systems Pharmacology: When multi-targeting is advantageous By Dr Kirkwood A. Pritchard Jr, Dr Dustin P. Martin and Dr Stephen Naylor The safety and efficacy of therapeutic drugs still requires improvement. In part this is due to the promiscuity of individual drugs, which on average can interact with an estimated 6-28… Read More
The Growth of Organoids in Cancer Drug Discovery By Dr J. Mark Treherne, et al., Will the automated expansion of organoids help improve the productivity of cancer drug discovery? Increasingly, complex cell-based assays and tissues are routinely used as part of cancer drug discovery. However, conventional monolayer or suspension cultures… Read More
Beyond SEND: Leveraging non-clinical data to drive translational research forward By Katherine Briggs, et al., This article will discuss some of the potential use cases that Standard for Exchange of Nonclinical Data (SEND), datasets can support. Both to advance translational research across multiple research sites and also to drive efficiencies… Read More
Increasing Drug Discovery Success With 3D Cell Culture Systems By Dr Richard M. Eglen, Dr Feng Li and Dr Tony Frutos Drug candidates often fail in the clinic for two reasons: they lack efficacy or possess an adverse toxicity profile. These failures can come at a high cost, especially when… Read More
How Advanced Automated Liquid Handling Systems are Reshaping Drug Discovery By Helen Stewart-Miller and Dr Richard Massey Winter 2018/19 Once the domain of high-throughput screening (HTS) applications, automated liquid handling systems are now used ubiquitously in drug discovery and have been fundamental in increasing throughput, driving efficiencies and improving standards… Read More
