Clinical trials

The Genie in the Test Tube – From Gene to Gene Therapy: Part 2 By Dr Jan Steiner In the previous edition, we discussed gene therapy in terms of potential vectors and their applications. Now, we discuss the potential clinical uses of these constructs. To date, the main applications of gene therapy have been in […]

The promise of pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics By Dr Tim Peakman and Dr Steve Arlington Within the next 10 years the benefits of pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics will inevitably outweigh the disadvantages. But what are the commercial and legal implications for the pharmaceutical industry especially for companies who have lead candidates ready to enter development? The twenty-first […]

High-throughput Crystallisation By Dr Sara Moran and Dr Lance Stewart With structure-based drug design on the increase can the development of high-throughput crystallisation fulfil its promise to revolutionise the drug discovery process? In an era when the development of drugs is hindered by the exorbitant costs of discovery and clinical trials, any method that can […]

The Industrialisation of Bioinformatics By Dr Alex Titomirov With the completion of the ‘draft’ sequence of the human genome predicting an estimate of 40,000-120,000 genes that describe us, the real work begins. The problem now is not lack of data but lack of tools to thoroughly analyse what we already have and what’s coming in […]

By Dr David C. U’Prichard It is almost axiomatic that the pharmaceutical R&D industry has not achieved in the last decade an increase in productivity (measured as high value NCEs) commensurate with the explosion of new biological information, chemistry techniques and information storage/retrieval/examination systems, let alone the real increase in industry R&D expenditure. In particular, […]

By Michael P. Murphy, MSc Pharmacogenomics offers the opportunity to adopt a new paradigm in drug development. The pharmaceutical industry is faced with a number of challenges including relatively low productivity and success in bringing new drugs to market. Investors demand that pharmaceutical companies deliver several new drugs to the marketplace each year. Additional pressure […]

The role of toxicogenomics in drug discovery By Dr Robin E. Neft and Dr Spencer Farr The information that toxicogenomics can bring in terms of toxic mechanisms, safety and efficacy must ultimately have a major impact on the drug discovery process. Large scale genome sequencing has lead to elucidation of the entire human genome totalling […]

Harnessing the CRO Intellect By Ian Lennox and Dr Nigel Brown There is no question that pharmaceutical companies are qualified to perform their own discovery and preclinical research. However, to fully exploit the new technologies in the early research phases, to maximise drug leads, and to minimise costs, would the outsourcing to a fully integrated […]

The Genie in the Test Tube – From Gene to Gene Therapy: Part 1 By Dr Jan Steiner For thousands of years, medicine was a descriptive art, with treatments for disease arising from astute observation and trial and error. The rise of modern forms of biological sciences, especially the developments in molecular biology over the […]

Emerging therapeutic vaccines By Marc Hertz, Soren Mouritsen and Anand Gautam The excitement over the past 30 years for immunotherapy of cancer and other diseases has not led to the expected clinical successes. Over-enthusiasts predicted a cure for cancer with the initial development of monoclonal antibody technology, and later the ‘magic bullets’ or toxin-labelled antibodies. […]

By Jennie Gwynn and Peter J Hylands Putting aside the excitement surrounding the human genome, in the near future we may well start to see the emergence of a new class of prescription medicine containing complex mixtures of plant extracts. This article discusses the important role that plants can play in the search for new […]

By Professor Ken Powell, Deputy Director, Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research Pharmaceutical research and development is changing. The old model of drug discovery, based on a combination of imprecise candidate generation and broad physiological screens, has given way to more specific and intelligent approaches to target identification and drug design. Now, a vast influx of […]

The Future Role of CROs By John M Hall PhD and Ludo Reynders PhD The increasing reliance by big pharmaceutical companies on CROs presents a mixture of challenges and opportunities for the industry. Given that the majority of customers are global in their reach, the CRO industry must be prepared to match that reach. Edmund […]

Using Expression Databases for Drug Discovery By Dr Greg Lennon Reference databases are being built cataloguing the amount of RNA each gene makes under different conditions and in different individuals. These databases can be mined easily and effectively to aid the drug discovery process. The success of the Human Genome Project provokes the question: what […]