At 14:12 09/01/2002 +0000, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>There is an interesting article by David Horrobin in Nature Biotechnology
>19, 1099-1020 (December 2001) with the title "Realism in drug
>discovery---could Cassandra be right?"
Athel is right; this is an interesting article that certainly reflects a
small but growing view point in and around the pharmaceutical industry. I
was at a meeting in December (Realizing Genomic Medicine) where David
Horrobin gave the opening address very much along these lines, and he
summed up at the end. I had a chance to talk to him at some length, and I
think he is very much in sympathy with the need for more attention to be
paid to systems level approaches rather than just genes and molecules.
Actually, I would say that the failure of the research effort is startling,
because it goes beyond the two issues that Athel has commented on
previously - the limitations of structure-based design and the failure to
think of the system-level impact of a drug. There is no compelling
evidence that other recent tools - combinatorial chemistry and high
throughput screening - are yet leading to higher productivity. What is
very impressive, on the other hand, is the rise in research costs per drug
developed.
David Fell
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Prof David A Fell,
School of Biological & Molecular Sciences, Oxford Brookes University,
Headington, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1865 483247 Fax: +44 (0)1865 484017
Mob: +44 (0)7786 515729 http://mudshark.brookes.ac.uk/
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