Medicinal chemistry

Building New Models of Drug Discovery in Europe – The Innovative Medicines Initiative By Dr Angela Wittelsberger, Dr Hugh Laverty and Dr Michel Goldman The discovery and development of a new medicine is time-consuming, risky and expensive. It often takes 10-15 years and an investment of on average >$1 billion for a compound to navigate […]

Collaboration For Innovation Is The New Mantra For The Pharmaceutical Industry By Professor Jackie Hunter In order to maintain a flow of innovative medicines there is a growing realisation that companies cannot allow the status quo to remain as it is and the need to identify sources of appropriate knowledge and expertise outside of their […]

More Than Genes and Cells: Drug Discovery in the Extracellular Matrix (ECM) By Dr William Bains Drug discovery in the last few decades has focused on the cellular and genetic mechanisms of disease. This has been very successful in cancer, which is a disease of somatic genetics, and moderately successful elsewhere. But the declining productivity […]

Large-Scale Expansion of Stem Cells For Therapy and Screening By Dr Y. John Shyu, Dr Katherine E. Strathearn and Dr Richard M. Eglen Recently, pre-clinical and clinical studies of stem cells in regenerative medicine have demonstrated great promise as treatments for various diseases. Their ability to self-renew and differentiate makes stem cells valuable for both […]

Partnering with the right CRO is a winning strategy for companies big and small By Dr Davide Molho The Bio-Pharma business model is undergoing radical changes. Over the last two decades, we have seen the biopharmaceutical industry gradually become more willing to look externally and embrace the concept of outsourcing as it looks for new […]

Outsourced Kinase Profiling Services: Adding Value To In-House Kinase Programmes Dr John Comley Biochemical kinase profiling using a large panel of kinases with a broad coverage of the human kinome has become the de facto norm within the Pharma industry. The importance of this activity is demonstrated by the large number of service providers offering […]

Multi-Parameter Flow Cytometry Technology Advances for Rare Cell Analysis and Sorting By David Gebhard and Dr Diether Recktenwald The study of rare cell populations is important to advance medical diagnostics and therapeutics. For many clinical studies, rare cell counts promise to provide valuable alternate end points; examples are circulating tumour cells in peripheral blood, tumour […]

There are approximately 7,000 rare diseases, which from a regulatory perspective are defined as those diseases where there are less than 200,000 patients in the US or that affect no more than five in 10,000 of the general population in the EU. Such diseases usually have a genetic basis, often affecting patients early in childhood, […]

Carbon-14 Labelled API Manufacturing By Dr Sean L. Kitson and Dr David Speed Carbon-14 labelled API and IMP requirements for Phase 0/I to Phase III mass balance and micro-dosing clinical trials can be met by contract manufacturing in compliance with MHRA and FDA Phase I cGMP guidelines. The short supply and escalating price of carbon-14 […]

Fragment Library Design – The Evolution Of Fragment Based Lead Discovery By Dr Edward Zartler, Dr Chris Swain and Simon Pearce With the growing need to streamline the drug discovery process, screening against fragment libraries rather than drug-like molecules has become increasingly adopted as an integral part of many drug discovery programmes. However, success depends […]