Translational chemistry

Unlocking Clinical Trial Data to Uncover New Therapeutic Opportunities By David Wang, Masha Hoffey and Dr Simone Sharma This article discusses opportunities, challenges and best practices in leveraging infrastructure excellence and AI to unlock the value of early or inconclusive clinical trial data. The goal… driving stronger biomarker-based insights and decisions and helping to advance […]

By Dr Alexander C. Maue It has become quite evident that the microbiome has the potential to impact drug discovery in vital ways. In addition to impacting study reproducibility and variability, the microbiome may influence drug efficacy or serve as a therapeutic agent. To capitalise on the microbiome’s potential to improve human health, biotech and […]

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 […]

The Reality of Virtual Pharmaceutical Companies By Dr Stephen Naylor and Dr Kirkwood A. Pritchard Jr We discuss the oxymoronic proposition of a Virtual Pharmaceutical Company (VPC) and the typical adopted business model, as well as provide examples of such companies currently trying to undertake this adventurous task. The vagaries and complexities of bringing a […]

Flow Cytometry – The advanced systems overcoming drug discovery pain points By Helen Stewart-Miller and Dr Richard Massey Flow cytometry is an invaluable technique for the characterisation of highly heterogeneous cell populations. Thanks to improvements in throughput, automation and multichannel detection capabilities, recent years have seen its use expand across a wide range of drug […]

From Genotype to Phenotype: Leveraging functional genomics in oncology By Dr Menelas Pangalos & Steve Rees et al. A challenge in drug discovery is that, at best, only around one in five drug candidates will lead to the launch of a medicine. In 2011, AstraZeneca initiated a strategic ‘5R Framework’ focusing on identifying drug projects […]

Integrated Platform Drug Discovery and Development Companies – Part 2: Comparative analysis By Dr Stephen Naylor and Dr Kirkwood A. Pritchard Jr Spring 2019 Large pharmaceutical companies have struggled to efficiently implement tools, technologies and platforms into their drug discovery and development (DDD) programmes. More recently there have been attempts by small-to-medium sized pharmaceutical companies […]

Fostering Multidisciplinary Collaboration in Drug Discovery By Professor Zeynep Erden, et al. Drug discovery teams combine specialists with in-depth knowledge from a variety of scientific disciplines. Such diversity in thought worlds poses a challenging exercise in cross-disciplinary collaboration and project coordination. Based on a longitudinal field study of five projects in a leading pharmaceutical company, […]

3D Organoid Cell Culture – Optimising disease models for research and drug discovery By Dr Amanda Linkous, Hilary Sherman, Iris Li and Dr Richard M. Eglen The use of human-induced pluripotent stem cells (HiPSCs) continues to grow in three-dimensional (3D) spheroid and organoid culture. Although advances in 3D cell culture systems are improving drug target […]

Systems Pharmacology: When multi-targeting is advantageous By Dr Kirkwood A. Pritchard Jr, Dr Dustin P. Martin and Dr Stephen Naylor The safety and efficacy of therapeutic drugs still requires improvement. In part this is due to the promiscuity of individual drugs, which on average can interact with an estimated 6-28 other off-target moieties. However, the […]