Clinical specialities

Monitoring the Balance Between Immune Repression and Stimulation in Cancer Immunotherapy By Dr Peter Schulz-Knappe and Dr Georg Lautscham Cancer is still one of the main causes of death worldwide, yet recent strides towards more effective treatments have been made in the form of new cancer immunotherapies. By weaponising the body’s own immune defences, these […]

Spheroids Rapidly Becoming a Preferred 3D Cell Culture Format By Dr John Comley There are many advantages associated with culturing cells in three-dimensional (3D) versus conventional two-dimensional (2D) tissue culture. Scaffold-free 3D cell culture systems that generate spheroids (and other similar multicellular aggregations) have proved useful as they offer an easy route to access 3D […]

The Discoverome – Creative Destruction of Barriers for Faster to Patient Medicines R&D By Chris Molloy Future medicines discovery begins and ends with patients. Its scope will no longer be limited by the walls of the lab and the moats of major pharma. It will be disease-led, highly collaborative and fast. What is needed is […]

Immuno-Oncology’s Biomarker Dilemma: How to add value in an uncertain development landscape By Dr Rachel Laing and Olivier Lesueur Given their ability to promote long-term survival in a percentage of cancer patients, PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitors have fast become foundational cancer therapies. But knowing which patients may respond to these drugs is challenging, in large part […]

Kinases and Drug Discovery: Protein Kinases as a Validated Drug Target By Professor Said A. Goueli The role of protein and lipid kinases in cellular physiology and normal and abnormal growth has been well appreciated and has been the focus of intensive research in both academic arenas and pharmaceutical industries. The payoff for the pharmaceutical […]

A Strategic Vision For 21st Century Drug Discovery By Dr Wayne Bowen, Dr Giles Sanders, Dr Andreas Werdich, Dr Brian Warrington and Dr Elizabeth Farrant Delivering genuine therapeutic innovation is more challenging and complex than ever. Despite major scientific breakthroughs and technological advances leading to a greater understanding of the aetiology of diseases, it is […]

Translational Chemical Biology: Gap assessment for advancing drug discovery, development and precision medicine By Dr Mukund Chorghade, Dr Michael Liebman, Dr Gerald Lushington, Dr Stephen Naylor and Dr Rathnam Chaguturu As yesterday’s lead molecule enters today’s clinical trial, the standard operating script seems to call for product developers and clinicians to push away the originating […]

Filling The Drug Discovery Abyss – Novel Business Models to Push Through the Valley of Death By Dr Swati Prasad, Dr Charles McOsker, Professor Kathryn Chapman and Dr Michael Foley Over the past three years, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) have approved around 200 novel drugs for […]

3D Cellular Imaging – Advances and Considerations for High-Content Screening By O. Joseph Trask, Dr Daniel V. LaBarbera and Dr Kevin Quick Commercially available high-content imaging (HCI) systems, introduced in the 1990s, have provided the scientific community with a platform that offers a unique set of tools ideal for advancing high-throughput biological discoveries and therapeutic […]

An Update on Hepatitis B Therapies By Dr John Sullivan-Bolyai The hepatitis B crisis is a worldwide unmet medical need. Hepatitis B (HBV) is the cause of a silent epidemic that has resulted in a worldwide healthcare crisis. Despite the significant burden it places on communities across the globe, hepatitis had been mainly ignored as […]

CRISPR Cas9: Transforming Gene Editing in Drug Discovery Labs By Dr John Comley It is evident from a recent market survey on gene editing in drug discovery that CRISPR/Cas9 is now recognised as the superlative method when attempting a gene knockout or when introducing defined mutations, insertions or modifications to the genome. Although use of […]

Cell Therapy & Gene Therapy – The emerging fourth pillar of healthcare systems By Keith Thompson As the CEO of an organisation that deals exclusively in cell therapy and gene therapy, it is no surprise that I would champion the emergence of these products as the fourth pillar of medicine alongside small molecules, biologics and […]

Breath Based Biomarker Detection & Breath Biopsy – Informing drug development and future treatment regimes By Billy Boyle and Dr Mike Murphy The recent approval of the first liquid biopsy test for the diagnosis of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) demonstrates how biomarker-based detection tools are becoming important components of precision medicine-based drug treatment regimes. […]

By Dr Thomas Mehrling Increasingly, oncology agents are being used in combination. However, with complications such as drug resistance and unfavourable side-effect profiles, researchers have been looking for new ways to enhance treatment effect and tolerability. New fusion technology molecules appear to offer a beneficial synergy, but will this withstand clinical investigation and what is […]

The Human Microbiome – A new frontier in drug discovery By Lee Jones There is a new phenomenon sweeping the globe (or at least sweeping the imagination of people around the globe). It is the human gut microbiome and the role it may play in the future of human health. Recent reports have indicated that […]

Ion Channels – Increasingly Enticing Targets For Drug Discovery by Dr Douglas Krafte and Deborah Erickson Drug discovery focused on ion-channel proteins began generating great value for pharmaceutical R&D programmes more than 30 years ago, giving rise to medicines still important in the pharmacopeia for treating human disease. Pfizer Inc’s Norvasc (amlodipine besylate), for example, […]