Biotechnology, Bioterrorism & Biosecurity By Dr George Poste Advances in genetics and biotechnology offer great promise in the fight against infectious diseases. But the same technologies will also increase the threat from bioterrorism. Governments must accord 'biosecurity' a higher priority in defence and foreign policies to reduce the risk of… Read More
High throughput genomics and drug discovery - parallel universes or a continuum? By Dr Mark Beggs and Audrey Long HTS has been in place for approximately 10-12 years and has achieved a threeorder of magnitude scale up. Genomics has been in a 'high throughput' mode for approximately four years for… Read More
By Dr Mark L. Nelson Less than a hundred years ago, if you developed a microbial infection your immune system couldnt handle, you died. Then came the wonder drugs, antibiotics capable of fighting the infections for you. But times have changed. Now, because of antibiotics, their use and misuse, the… Read More
The Future of Cardiovascular Gene Therapy By Christopher J. Reinhard Advances in regenerative medicine go hand in hand with new perspectives and insights into potential treatments for heart disease. After a decade of pre-clinical and early Phase 1 and 2 clinical studies, gene therapy is now emerging as a genuine… Read More
Obesity - The 21st century disease By Diane L. McBay and Dr Colin T. Dourish Obesity will be the leading cause of death and disability in the 21st century. This epidemic is largely attributable to increasingly sedentary lifestyles and the abundance of tasty, high-fat foods. Obesity increases the risk of… Read More
Channelling Drug Discovery - Current trends in ion channel drug discovery research By Dr David Owen and Andrew Silverthorne Ion channels are proteins that span cell membranes thus forming conduits or 'channels' through which charged ions such as sodium and potassium can pass across a normally impermeant barrier such as… Read More
Key R&D informatics challenges facing small/medium-sized pharmaceutical and biotech companies By John Wise The ability of R&D informatics to deliver real benefit to the SME pharmaceutical company is constrained by the increasing burden of non-discretionary computer systems combined with the lack of opportunity to leverage the economies of scale enjoyed… Read More
Business strategy for implementation of biomarkers in drug development By Miles Flamenbaum With pharmacoproteomic biomarkers being the subject of focus among regulatory agencies as well as research institutions, many pharmaceutical companies are increasing their interest and investment in biomarker strategies. This article discusses the potential for new efficiencies and cost… Read More
From raw data in the laboratory to information availability in the enterprise By Dieter Kreusel If pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies could measure their success merely on the volume of raw data accumulated from screening assays and pre-clinical testing, they would be basking in the glow of unprecedented success. Companies are… Read More
By Dr Patrick J. Vojta, Vincent P. Kazmer and Dr Larry D. Kier Adverse drug responses are an important post-marketing public health issue, occurring many times in subsets of treatment populations. Promising new approaches to predicting physiological responses to drugs are focused on genomic responses or toxicogenomics (1). This article… Read More
The genomics revolution is poised to sweep aside the old economics of pharmaceutical R&D. The biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries; and perhaps healthcare delivery in general; are on the brink of transformation, and companies that embrace the revolution in the right way stand to reap enormous benefits. Developing a new drug… Read More
Data Mining in the pharmaceutical industry By Dr Robert D. Small and Herbert A. Edelstein A research-based pharmaceutical company is a data accumulating wonder. More than in any other industry, success is predicated on the collection, processing and exploitation of that data. This is not always recognised and often not… Read More
Chemogenomics - A gene family approach to parallel drug discovery By Dr Paul R. Caron, Dr Michael D. Mullican, Dr Robert D. Mashal, Dr Keith P. Wilson, Dr Michael S. Su and Dr Mark A. Murcko Currently available drugs only target around 500 different proteins (4). Recent reports from efforts… Read More
The lab on a chip and its impact on drug discovery by Dr Simon Cowen and Dr Coulton Legge Few technology developments have had as profound an effect on society as the invention of the microchip integrated circuit in the 1960s. Since then, the power of electronic circuits has increased… Read More
Why pharmaceutical companies should teach scientists to be entrepreneurs By Dr Jeffrey P. Kiplinger Conventional wisdom says that big employers do not want anything to do with entrepreneurs as employees. The last thing a human resources director wants to see on a resume is that a candidate started a business… Read More
The Impact of Genomics on Regulation By Dr Steve Arlington, Dr Tim Peakman, Adriana Salvatore and Jonathan Peachey Advances in science and technology are enabling us to understand physiology and pathology at a totally new level; to define, subtype and track diseases much more accurately; and to treat patients far… Read More
