Many research and development (R&D) centers are focusing on the need to improve the technologies employed in drug discovery (DD), thanks to the unproportional increase of R&D expenditure in the pharmaceutical industry compared to the number of new medicines that are marketed year-over-year.
Many technologies are extensively used in developing the drug leads. They include proteomics, bioinformatics, high-throughput screening techniques, natural products, combinational chemistry, molecular diversity, compound library design, protein 3D-structures, NMR-based screening, 3D QSAR in modern drug design, physicochemical concepts and computer-aided prediction of drug toxicity and metabolism.
Combinational chemistry plays an important role in the drug discovery, as it includes the leads from the plant derivatives. The discovery includes processes like identification of the fraction of importance in the plant of interest. The analysis of the product to identify the active ingredient by screening different fractions plays an important role in the development of the lead. However, screening of the identified product for the efficacy and toxicity are time consuming and very expensive. In combinational chemistry, predictive toxicology is toxicogenomics based on the gene expression. This new technology will help the researchers to cut short the time and cost in drug lead optimization. This technology has given many important leads in optimizing the new products.
Microbiology in association with other biotechnology techniques plays an important role in development of preventive oncogenic drugs. Understanding the microflora and microfauna of the human body plays an important role in the development these drugs.
Also, drug development technology includes isolation of high quality drug leads which can be the probable new drugs. But the conversion of these leads into new drugs is the key point. To address this need, in recent times focus has shifted to the nanoscience research which cut the cost and shortens the time for the development of useful nano-compounds. Nanoscience research plays an important role in drug development as the leads developed by this process mimic the naturally available molecules as their repeats. Hence, they are expected to have least or no adverse effects on the human beings.
According to Dr. Justin Lamb of MIT, drug discovery today can be reduced to connecting the dots between diseases, genes and small molecules. The basic obstacle is the language that is being used in different techniques. The solution is to translate information about disease state, gene function and small-molecule action into a common language. Dr. Lamb and co workers at MIT are attempting to create a public database, which they call a connectivity map or 'Cmap', a community-wide resource. Its proof-of-concept was published in a sequence of papers appeared simultaneously in science and cancer cell. They made available their pilot database on their Broad Institute to public to facilitate industry relationship.
Cmap plays an important role in the development of lead molecule by some research organizations, which cannot afford costly studies like safety pharmacology and toxicology studies. They can predict the probable effects of the study.
Cmap has hit a sweet spot within the research community as it can predict the mechanism and the cellular pathway of the high efficacy molecule based on the base line data that has been already known. Whether this language can become de facto language for the drug discoverers across the world or will it have the fate of Esparando is a question that only time can answer. Though many drug technologies have developed, the conversion of leads into the potent drugs is a costly and time taking process.
(The author is consultant with Vivo Bio Tech Pvt Ltd)