DRUG DISCOVERY PROCESS 2022

Running head: DRUG DISCOVERY
The Changing role of Academia in Drug Discovery
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Author Note

1DRUG DISCOVERY
Introduction
According to the Food and Drug Administration US (2019), drug is defined as a
substance that is used for diagnosis, mitigation, cure, treatment and effective prevention of
the disease. Alternatively it can be said that drug is a chemical substance that is intended to
affect the the pathological mechanism of the body. Analysis of the different therapeutic areas,
highlighted that the development of new medication starts with target identification followed
by approval for marketing. The overall process takes at least 12 years for successful
completion. Food and Drug Administration US (2019) stated that there is no simple step for
producing viable clinical compound. However, effective collaboration with the biology,
chemistry and toxicology and pharmacokinetic is important for the promotion of successful
drug discovery. The following essay aims to highlight the process of drug discovery along
with a brief overview of the clinical evaluation of the drug, approval and marketing of the
newly discovered drugs. This will be followed by traditional roles of the academic and the
pharmaceuticals in the process of drug discoveries and their role change during the course of
last 15 to 20 years. The new academic in the UK, Europe Scotland, that are now taking over
big pharmas will also be discussed in this essay. At the end, the paper will tend to ascertain
the future of this academic and bin-pharma collaborations towards the process of drug
discovery.
Process of Drug Discovery
The development or designing of drug is initiated when scientists identify a biological
target (either a protein receptor or a protein molecule, enzyme of gene) that is involved in a
specific biological process that is thought to be dysfunctional among the patients with any
particular disease for example, Alzheimer’s disease (Khachaturian 2015). The main goal of
the preclinical drug discovery program is to design one of more clinical target molecule. Each

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of these target molecules has significant evidences backing their biological activity over the
target that is relevant to the diseases and also has drug-like properties so that it becomes
eligible for human trial. The majority of the drug discovery program attempts to generate
more than one candidate molecule (concept highlighted in figure: 1) because majority of the
identified molecule do not move through the entire process due to safety issues. Thus the
process of drug discovery involves screening of more than one molecule before sending for
the final human trial and ethical approval (Khachaturian 2015).
(Source: Khachaturian 2015)
Stages of drug development
Once the promising compound has been identified by the researcher, the initiate
experiments in order to gather further information over how the compound is being absorbed,

3DRUG DISCOVERY
metabolized, distributed and is excreted from the body. The potential benefits and mechanism
of action of selected compound, the optimal dosage and the medium of drug delivery. The
developmental process also includes side-effects of the selected drugs based on toxicology,
the affect of drugs on different age, gender, race and ethnicity and interaction of the drugs
with other potential drugs (Cabrera-Pérez et al. 2016).
(Source: Khachaturian 2015)
Target identification
The identification of drug target depends on few factors like pathophysiology of the
disease, the target expression uniformity in the body and the 3D structure of the target and
feasibility of obtaining that target. Other factors that are taken into consideration include
accessibility of the target under high-throughput screening, toxicity profile of the target,