Combinatorial chemistry

By Ibis Sanchez-Serrano and Rathnam Chaguturu Mitigation of COVID-19 pandemic requires a combination of effective epidemiological policies and the discovery/development of powerful drugs against the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that causes this disease. This article examines the major initiatives being explored at the public policy level to contain the spread of COVID-19 […]

Stem Cell Differentiation By Dr Lilian Hook Stem cells are extraordinary cells, capable of both self-renewal and differentiation to mature somatic cells in vivo and in vitro (1,2). They have many features and advantages which could revolutionise drug development and healthcare applications. Stem cells offer a limitless, consistent supply of physiologically relevant cells from validated […]

2030 Life Sciences and Health in the Digital Age (Part 1) By Dr Steve Arlington and John Wise One of the key ways in which The Pistoia Alliance works with its members is to help them not just deal with the problems of today, but also to look ahead, to anticipate how the industry is […]

Automating Automation – How close are we to Artificial Intelligence impact? By Dr Michael A. Tarselli, Dr Yohann Potier and Dr Alan E. Fletcher In terms of consistency, repeatability, known errors and sheer volume, there exists perhaps no better collection of data for computer learning than that emerging from automated processes. Many common lab procedures […]

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 can be poorly predictive of […]

Analytical Biophysical Tools To Accelerate Discovery of Therapeutic Antibodies By Dr Yasmina Noubia Abdiche The innate ability of antibodies to bind their targets with high affinity and exquisite specificity is leveraged in the discovery of therapeutic antibodies to treat a broad range of diseases including cancer, autoimmune disease and heart disease. In addition, antibodies are […]

Disruptive Approaches To Accelerate Drug Discovery and Development (Part 2) By Dr Anton Fliri, et al. Part 2: Emergent intelligence, a new paradigm for drug discovery. (You can read part 1 of disruptive approaches to accelerate drug discovery and development linked here.) The staggering clinical trial failure rate of experimental drugs indicates that despite huge […]

Disruptive Approaches To Accelerate Drug Discovery and Development (Part 1) By Ibis Sanchez- Serrano, Dr Tom Pfeifer and Dr Rathnam Chaguturu This article is part 1 of 2, and covers tools, technologies and the core model of disruptive approaches to accelerate drug discovery and development. Tesla intends to implement and practise an ‘open source’ philosophy […]

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 […]

By Dr A Roy, Prof B Patwardhan and Dr R Chaguturu Modern drug discovery approaches take too long, are too expensive, have too many clinical failures and uncertain outcomes. There are many reasons for this unsustainable business model, but primarily, the approaches are not comprehensively holistic. Secondly, none of the pharmaceutical companies openly share the […]

Phenotypic Drug Discovery: Striving towards the highest level of biological relevance By Dr John Comley Phenotypic drug discovery (PDD) implies screening where the molecular mechanism of action is not assumed and does not require knowledge of the molecular target. As such phenotypic drug discovery is comparable to empirical screening, which was historically used in drug […]

Misconduct in the biomedical sciences part 2: detection and prevention By Dr Gerald H. Lushington and Rathnam Chaguturu Discovering safe and effective medicines, one of the greatest gifts to humanity, relies intensely upon the availability of detailed, unassailably accurate biomedical scientific knowledge. The key distinction that separates science from other philosophical disciplines is that no […]

Misconduct in the biomedical sciences part 1: issues and causes By Dr Gerald H. Lushington and Rathnam Chaguturu Science pursues truth. Real advances in biomedical sciences improve our quality of life and save lives, but the path to these advances is cluttered with the distraction of irreproducible results – an affliction that has reached epidemic […]

Oncology Target Discovery by RNAi: The past, present, and future perspectives By Dr Hakim Djaballah and Bhavneet Bhinder Despite an investment of billions of US dollars in the search of novel therapies, cancer still remains the leading cause of death in the world. This emphasises the need to identify novel tumour dependencies and molecular targets. […]

Informatics & Data: Revolutionising the R&D Arena By Glyn Williams and Dr Paul Denny-Gouldson Today’s information technologies profoundly affect the way we conduct research and development (R&D), and the last 20 years have seen great advances in information technology across both our work and home lives. From representing complex material structures to rapidly sequencing and […]

A Decade of RNAi Screening: Too much hay and very few needles By Bhavneet Bhinder and Dr Hakim Djaballah RNAi screening is arguably the fastest growing field with the premise to better understand gene function at the genome level. It has been hailed as the second genomics wave, and in combination with the human genome-sequencing […]