Molecular medicine

Chemogenomics – A gene family approach to parallel drug discovery By Dr Paul R. Caron, Dr Michael D. Mullican, Dr Robert D. Mashal, Dr Keith P. Wilson, Dr Michael S. Su and Dr Mark A. Murcko Currently available drugs only target around 500 different proteins (4). Recent reports from efforts to sequence the human genome […]

The Impact of Genomics on Regulation By Dr Steve Arlington, Dr Tim Peakman, Adriana Salvatore and Jonathan Peachey Advances in science and technology are enabling us to understand physiology and pathology at a totally new level; to define, subtype and track diseases much more accurately; and to treat patients far more effectively, using novel delivery […]

New Developments in Analgesia By Dr Susan Boyce, Dr Zahid Ali and Dr Raymond G. Hill Novel therapies for pain and headache are major medical needs and constitute a continued opportunity. Novel treatments are likely to arise from a better understanding of both the pathophysiology of clinical pain conditions and the pharmacology of existing therapies. […]

Surrogate Endpoints In Cancer Trials By Professor Karol Sikora Over the next 20 years systematic programmes of cancer risk assessment will be established and cancer-preventive drugs will be developed. The ability to prevent cancer will dramatically increase the number of people who will need to regularly attend clinics. This article discusses how we urgently need […]

Protein Arrays – New technology for the proteomics era By Dr Jeffrey P. Kiplinger The study of the human proteome will drive drug discovery in coming years; although how, when, and in what direction are a little uncertain at present. To build understanding of the role of the human protein complement in health, development, and […]

By Professor Klaus Lindpaintner Pharmacogenetics represents a logical and consequent step in the history of medicine, but what are the immediate benefits and where do the hurdles lie in its implementation? It is common knowledge that today’s pharmacopea – in as much as it represents enormous progress if compared with what our physicians had only […]

Biologically Relevant Chemistry By Dr Stephen A. Hill A large proportion of R&D expenditure relates to the investigation of compounds which ultimately fail to reach the market as useful medicines. We discuss why early drug discovery – using high throughput, automated in vitro and in silico methods, must become the primary testing ground for novel […]

Increasing the chances of lead discovery By Sandra Fox, MBA, Dr Helen Wang, Dr Lynne Sopchak and Dr Richard Khoury For HTS laboratories worldwide, the mission is to supply therapeutic groups in the shortest time possible with high quality hits and leads that will become drug candidates. Mounting pressure to screen more targets against more […]

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 […]

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 […]