Clinical specialities

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 terms of both time and […]

Mining Plant Genomes – A modern approach to herbal healing By Michelle Vierra Plants are stationary soldiers. Rooted to one spot, they are not able to chase nutrients or flee from herbivores and pathogens. So in addition to the basic metabolites they synthesise for their survival, they produce a diverse array of organic compounds through […]

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’ focusing on identifying drug projects […]

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 by small-to-medium sized pharmaceutical companies […]

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 systems are improving drug target […]

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 common and convenient route of […]

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 other off-target moieties. However, the […]

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 drug candidates have already progressed […]

By Scott Hickman, Dr Brian Ogilvie and Tim Patterson. Good Laboratory Practice (GLP), are federal regulations that require implementation of a robust quality management system to ensure the validity, integrity and reliability of non-clinical safety data submitted for regulatory evaluation and approval. US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) GLP regulations (21 CFR parts 11 and […]

3D Cell Culture – Engineering Composable, Disease-Tunable 3D Human Microtissues for Drug Discovery By Dr Patrick Guye, Dr Eva Thoma and Dr Olivier Frey In this article, we will share some of what we have learned over the past 10 years as pioneers in the 3D cell culture space and provide guidance for those who […]

By Dr Phil Jones The mission at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is to eradicate cancer, which remains a major cause of mortality worldwide. It is the second leading cause of death in the United States and globally, claiming more lives than malaria, HIV/AIDs and tuberculosis combined (or ~1 of every 7 […]

Current Trends in RNA Therapeutics Development By Dr Xiaoqiu Wu and Dr Andrew P. Turnbull Cellular RNAs play crucial roles during disease progression and represent a diverse and largely untapped class of biomolecules that can be exploited for drug development. RNA species include messenger RNAs (mRNAs) that are translated into proteins, long non-coding RNAs including […]

Integrated Platform Drug Discovery and Development Companies – Part 1 By Dr Urban A. Kiernan and Dr Stephen Naylor Technology was lauded as the saviour of the drug discovery and development (DDD) process during the late 1990s. A myriad of independent companies developed and offered ‘innovative’ tools, technologies and platforms (TTPs) to pharmaceutical companies in […]

How Phenotypic CRISPR Screening is Revolutionising Drug Discovery By Dr Steffen Lawo and Dr Carlos le Sage Research in drug discovery and biotechnology increasingly exploits gene editing at industrial scale in order to identify and validate new biological targets for precision medicines. The discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 systems has fuelled a rapid expansion of gene editing […]

Astrazeneca R&D – Improving Drug Development Productivity With Better Predictivity By Dr Menelas Pangalos & Steve Rees et al. Changing demands in global healthcare over the past 15 years have led to greater complexity and spiralling costs in drug development. The average price tag of taking a new drug from discovery to completion of Phase […]

Precision Medicine Drugs – Pleonasm or Reality? Dr Urban Kiernan and Dr Stephen Naylor The complexity and uniqueness of human metabolism and physiology in the past decade has been highlighted and dissected. Arguments have been made to suggest that our lack of understanding about human individuality has led to the limited efficacy and safety of […]