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| The View From Here The focus of this month’s Editor’s Choice is a selection of papers and reviews that cover what may become the third phase in drug discovery. This approach will have its advantages in diseases for which obvious targets are not available and the goal is disease modification. However, as any technology, it will have its limitations and should be viewed as an addition to the other approaches, i.e. an extra tool in the drug discovery toolbox. Enjoy the read!
Frank Sams-Dodd is VP Pre-Clinical Research, Bionomics Ltd and CEO, Neurofit SAS, a pre-clinical CRO. Prior to this role he was Head of Psychopharmacology, Boehringer Ingelheim, Germany; Director of Physiology, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, San Diego; founder of a pre-clinical CNS CRO; and Research Fellow at H. Lundbeck, Denmark. While at Lundbeck, Frank developed a new animal model of schizophrenia. Frank received his M.Sc. in ethology from Copenhagen University, his Ph.D. from Cornell University in neuroscience and the D.Sc. degree in medicine from Copenhagen University. Frank also serves on the advisory board to the Seeding Drug Discovery Initiative by the Wellcome Trust. |
Drug discovery – like science – moves in phases. The first phase was represented by the physiology-based approach where drugs are evaluated in organ systems or intact animals for their ability to induce certain physiological effects or to reverse symptoms in disease models. The second phase employed the target-based approach where a specific molecular mechanism is selected based on scientific findings and selective drugs are developed using rational drug design and high-throughput screening technology. This approach, however, requires that druggable and therapeutically effective targets can be identified and this is not always the case. This has prompted a return to disease-focused screening systems, but instead of returning to in vivo screening, cell-based assays are being used in which drugs are screened for their ability to produce specific and disease-relevant biological effects at the level of single cells or subcellular compartments. 