Drug discovery and development are the essential driving forces for drug therapy. It is an expensive, long and high-risk business taking 10–15 years and is associated with a high attrition rate. At the preclinical stage, drug discovery is an iterative process between chemistry, biology and drug metabolism, refining the molecular properties until a compound suitable for advancing to human is found. Typically, about one in a thousand synthesized compounds is ever selected for progression to the clinic and out of these approximately only 1 in 10 drugs that start the clinical phase will make it to the market.
The talk will focus a couple of successful examples, one in a large pharma setting and another in a startup biotech setting.