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Good ideas for new drugs can come from anywhere. There was a time – now it seems like ancient history – when virtually all ideas came from the R&D departments of large pharmaceutical companies. Today, they often come from research carried out by dedicated groups of scientists at universities and small and medium-sized biotech firms, or even ‘virtual’ research groups connected by the internet.
Regardless of how it’s achieved, coming up with a concept for a new drug is not a random event. It starts with deciding what questions to ask in order to identify potential targets for a disease, and later focuses on developing strategies to find effective candidates that selectively affect those targets. Through hard work and trial and error, thousands of labs across the UK are developing new candidates every day. Thankfully, with some regularity, one scientist will turn to his or her colleagues and say, “I think we’ve got something here.” Then what? |
