Gene therapy

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, […]

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 […]

By Dr John Comley High-content screening (HCS) is a well-established approach for the multiparametric analysis of cellular events. Since its first introduction more than a decade ago, high content imaging systems have continually evolved with many improvements enabled to meet user demands of greater flexibility and the growing requirements of assays involving complex cellular disease […]

By Dr James Lim and Dr Fred Aswad While the use of human cell lines has become a permanent fixture in drug discovery and development, the lingering issue has been in their inconsistent results. This article discusses current attempts to make results from cell culture systems more biologically relevant which, in turn, could lead to […]

Microtissues For In Vitro Toxicity Assessment: Cost effective and in vivo relevant toxicology tools By Dr Stephanie Ravenscroft, Dr Caroline Bauch, Dr Laura Hinton and Dr Paul Walker Conventional two-dimensional (2D) cell models (adherent cells grown on cell culture plates or cells in suspension) are limited in their abilities to accurately predict clinical toxicity since […]

Synthetic Lethality and Anti Cancer Drug Discovery By Jonathan D Moore Classically-activated oncogene targets have been a mainstay of cancer drug discovery for the past 15 years, but the druggable targets in this category have been largely mined out. Future efforts to drug the cancer genome must take synthetic lethal approaches exploiting vulnerabilities opened up […]

  by Dr John Comley The case for using more physiologically-relevant cells for modelling disease pathophysiology, for understanding a drug’s mechanism of action, in toxicology/safety testing and in phenotypic drug screening assays is now well accepted. Human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are seen as a resource from which to differentiate unlimited quantities of almost […]

The Role Of Immunodeficient Animal Models In Advancing Immuno-Oncology Research By Dr Michael Seiler From inbred wild-type to more advanced genetically-engineered strains, mouse models enable researchers to gain important insights into the complex biological underpinnings of human cancer. Among those, spontaneous and genetically engineered immunodeficient strains can be administered in both primary human tumour tissue […]

Digital Pharma – How Digital Is Reshaping The Pharma Arena By Ulrica Sehlstedt, Nils Bohlin, Fredrik de Mare and Richard Beetz The pharmaceutical industry in the 20th and early 21st century has been in constant change, driven by both incremental and breakthrough innovations. These range from the discovery of penicillin and effective, targeted cancer drugs […]

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) In Drug Development By Dr Geoff J.M. Parker Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) can be used to provide quantitative measurements in the form of imaging biomarkers. These measurements have a number of attractive characteristics: They are non-invasive, can provide organ and lesion localisation of morphology, physiology and metabolism and can be repeated […]

Drug Discovery in a Multi-Omics World By Mike Furness Collectively rare diseases affect millions of people worldwide, but the number of people with any one condition is very small. Finding a cure is difficult as the market is not large enough to justify a big investment in drug development. This is all about to change […]

Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cells (CAR-T): Looking beyond the hype By Christoph Oldenburg, Dr Markus Thunecke and Dr John Herrmann While Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cells (CAR-T), have already demonstrated convincing efficacy in a specific setting, the jury is still out on whether they are a ‘game-changer’ for oncology as a whole and can justify current valuations […]

Therapeutic Drug Repurposing, Repositioning and Rescue Part IV: Financial model and analysis By David M. Kauppi and Dr Stephen Naylor There is a growing consensus that Drug Repurposing, Repositioning and Rescue (DRPx) impacts all stakeholders involved in the therapeutic drug sector. In part, this is due to the fact that the pharmaceutical industry accrues ~25% […]