Drug Discovery

Abstract

The drug industry is one of the major players guiding the development of the medicines, biotechnology & pharmacology field. Drug discovery is the process by which drugs are discovered and designed. It is a process which aims at identifying a compound therapeutically useful in curing & treating disease. The process of drug discovery involves the identification of candidates, synthesis, characterization, screening & assays for therapeutic efficacy. Once a compound has shown its value in these tests, it will begin the process of drug development prior to clinical trials. Developing a new drug is a tedious & expensive undertaking, despite promising discoveries and multibillion dollar investments for new drug development is quietly undergoing crisis. Currently, all existing therapies together hit only about 400 different drug targets. It is estimated that there are at least 10 times as many potential drug targets that could be exploited for future drug therapy.