Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Targeted medicine - dead end's approach?

I have written about targeted approach in drug development. Sure, it is a simulation of the real drug discovery process efficiently used by Big Pharma to slow down the progress in this field.  But it looks like somebody in this business try to make a revolt? They try to dismiss the targeted approach! No way! For sure Big Pharma will control the process in some way. But let’s read what skeptics are saying:

Two broad types of screens have sequentially dominated early stage drug development over the last hundred years or so—phenotypic screens and target-based screens. The former looks at the effects, or phenotypes, that compounds induce in cells, tissues or whole organisms, whereas the latter measures the effect of compounds on a purified target protein via in vitro assays.



Phenotypic screens used to be the mainstay of drug development. Such screens can potentially lead to the identification of a molecule that modifies a disease phenotype by acting on a previously undescribed target or by acting simultaneously on more than one target. However, subsequently determining the relevant target or targets of molecules identified by phenotypic screening has often proven slow or impossible.



Beginning in the 1980s, advances in molecular biology and genomics led to phenotypic screens largely being replaced by screens against defined targets implicated in disease.



Over the last decade, however, some drug developers have questioned whether an over-reliance on genetic approaches to validating targets for subsequent target-based drug discovery has resulted in reduced success in discovering first-in-class medicines.



If phenotypic screening will be taken by Big Pharma I am convinced that Big Pharma will overcomplicate it in order to slow down.  No other alternatives.

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