Drug Discovery Today - the magazine for the drug discovery professional: authoritative reviews and expert opinion; industry focused and peer reviewed.

Latest News

‘Call for targets’ for serious unmet need
A centre created by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and MRC Technology to fast-track the discovery and development of novel drugs opened its first call for targets recently.
FDA approves Xiaflex for debilitating hand condition
Xiaflex has recently been approved to treat progressive hand disease Dupuytren's contracture, which can affect a person’s ability to straighten and use their fingers.
Cambridge, UK to host BioFine Europe 2010
BioFine Europe 2010 will take place from 30–31 March and features The Peptide Conference 2010, the Synthetic Biology in Pharma conference and the BioFine Europe Exhibition.
FDA approves Victoza® (liraglutide) for diabetes
Novo Nordisk has announced that the FDA has granted marketing authorization for Victoza® for the treatment of type 2 diabetes in adults.
Advice highlights risk of Automatic Generic Substitution
A drug safety warning from the MHRA on the dangers of switching immunosuppressants calls into question the safety of the Department of Health’s proposal for Automatic Generic Substitution.

Podcasts

Evotec strengthens and expands its Alliance Business
Dr Mark Ashton is Executive Vice President, Business Development of Evotec and is responsible for Evotec's commercial and partnering activities. Prior to assuming responsibility for Business Development in 2005, Dr Ashton held a number of positions within Operations at Evotec: He joined the Company in 1995 as one of the initial employees of the Discovery Division, becoming Department Manager in 2001, Director of Chemistry Services in 2002 and taking over responsibility for Evotec's Discovery Services Division in 2004, where he had responsibility for Evotec's screening, parallel synthesis and medicinal chemistry operations. During his time at Evotec, Dr Ashton has managed a wide range of pharmaceutical and biotechnology related projects, including medicinal chemistry projects, design and synthesis of screening libraries and technology transfer projects and has been involved in the progression of a number of drug candidates into the clinic in numerous therapeutic areas. Dr Ashton has authored and co-authored a number of peer reviewed papers, articles and book chapters in addition to being named on a number of pharmaceutical patents. He is trained as a medicinal chemist. Prior to joining Evotec, Dr Ashton also had spells at ICI Pharmaceuticals and Organon Laboratories. Mark Whittaker is Senior Vice President Drug Discovery at Evotec where he manages a large drug discovery collaboration and the groups of computational chemistry and structural biology. Before joining Evotec in 2001, Mark spent 13 years at British Biotech Pharmaceuticals where he led a number of medicinal chemistry programmes and was latterly Director of Chemistry. At British Biotech, Mark contributed to the discovery and development of six compounds that have progressed into human clinical trials. Before his career at British Biotech, Mark carried out post-doctoral research at the University of Oxford and at York University, Toronto and obtained a D. Phil in Chemistry from the University of York.
The Ubiquitin Story
In this podcast interview with Drug Discovery Today, Nobel Prize winner Professor Aaron Ciechanover will talk about his career, his Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the UPS, and the extraordinary opportunities and challenges for drug discovery in this area.
Califf, Behrman and Kramer discuss the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative.
Download the Califf, Behrman and Kramer podcast as an mp3 file
Dr Brent Vose outlines AstraZeneca's oncology pipeline.
Download the Dr. Brent Vose podcast as an mp3 file

Webinars

Aequorin Bioluminescence Assays – a paradigm shift?
Metabolomics, a Novel Tool for Understanding the Early-Stage Mechanistic Underpinnings of Drug Action and Safety.
In association with Matabolon. This presentation demonstrated the utility of metabolomics in drug safety research through a case study done in collaboration with Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.

Features

Drug discovery in the era of Facebook—new tools for scientific networking
This article is involved with the impact that social networking is beginning to make on drug discovery process. While bioinformaticsand chemoinformatics underpin research at a scientific level, rapid communication between individual researchers across continents now allows the global exchange of ideas, tools and technologies.Networking at this level of speed and reach is quite a recent phenomenon. It facilitates the developmentof common interests, accelerates technology transfer and increases cooperative and competitive behaviour. The article critically evaluates different web-based networking approaches as effectivere sources for the drug discovery scientist.
Members' Content
Drug Discovery Today: highlighted review. ‘Metabolite-likeness’ as a criterion in the design and selection of pharmaceutical drug libraries
This highlighted review from Drug Discovery Today by Dobson, Patel and Kell outlines how "metabolite-likeness" in an analogous manner to "drug-likeness" and "lead-likeness" can be used to improve the value of compound libraries design by incorporating features of endogenous metabolites ("endogenites")
Drug Discovery Today Citation Classic: The growing impact of click chemistry on drug discovery.
Welcome to the first article in Drug Discovery Today Citation Classics. I would say that it is very hard to predict what articles will make citation classic articles, but I suppose that having a Nobel Prize-winning author and a topic of great significance to the field of synthetic medicinal chemistry is a pretty good start.
Most downloaded review Q1 2009: Target discovery from data mining approaches
The most downloaded review article from Drug Discovery Today from the first quarter of 2009 deals with the topic of target discovery from the informatics perspective. It would be difficult to overstate the value to Pharma of identifying and validating the most relevant therapeutic targets. In this article, Yang, Adelstein and Kassis outline text mining, its value and limitations and application to target discovery. In addition, they cover the field of emerging and integrated data mining approaches.

Downloads

The shrinking of the knowledge base – what is the impact of this on the speed and security of drug development?
Paul Branthwaite discusses the implication of reducing the Pharmaceutical industry knowledge base as a result of mergers, acquisitions and a drive to reduce cost base. He specificaly deals with the impact of these changes on the ability to produce innovative pharmaceuticals and the time required so to do.

25 Hottest Articles

Transforming fragments into candidates: small becomes big in medicinal chemistry • Review article
Drug Discovery Today, Volume 14, Issue 13-14, July 2009, Pages 630-646 | de Kloe, G.E.; Bailey, D.; Leurs, R.; de Esch, I.J.P.
The road ahead for large pharma: long-term science and innovation • Editorial
Drug Discovery Today, Volume 14, Issue 9-10, May 2009, Pages 439-441 | Lundberg, J.M.; Reilly, C.
From fragment to clinical candidate-a historical perspective • Review article
Drug Discovery Today, Volume 14, Issue 13-14, July 2009, Pages 668-675 | Chessari, G.; Woodhead, A.J.
Homology modeling in drug discovery: current trends and applications • Review article
Drug Discovery Today, Volume 14, Issue 13-14, July 2009, Pages 676-683 | Cavasotto, C.N.; Phatak, S.S.
Text-based knowledge discovery: search and mining of life-sciences documents • Review article
Drug Discovery Today, Volume 7, Issue 11, May 2002, Pages S89-S98 | Mack, R.; Hehenberger, M.

Latest News

Podcasts

Webinars

Features

Downloads

25 Hottest Articles

Members' Login

Not a member?