The Challenge of Drug Discovery in the 21st Century

The major challenge facing drug discovery research today is the lack of productivity as measured by the introduction of new molecular entities (NMEs) into therapy. Only 21 NMEs were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2008, the same level of productivity as the 1950’s even though spending on drug discovery research is many times higher. The drug discovery process can take as long as 8-12 yrs between the initial synthesis of a drug candidate and commercialization, and it is costly requiring well over $1 billion on average for every marketed drug that enters clinical practice. We have founded the Pennsylvania Center for Drug Discovery (PCDD) at the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Center (PBC) in Doylestown, Pennsylvania USA. The PBC is a mixed use academic-industrial biotechnology facility with >220 total employees. We have developed programs to advance the mission of accelerating the translation of new basic discoveries into therapies suitable for human clinical evaluation. The PCDD drug discovery capability is built upon a network of non-profit research institutions and small biotechnology companies using industrystandard metrics for the identification of hits, leads and preclinical development compounds, risk analysis and development. The PCDD is also meant to serve as an international think tank to brainstorm ways of improving efficiencies and productivity in early drug discovery. Jobs are already being created in the companies associated with the PCDD, helping to reintegrate senior-level biomedical drug discovery researchers who have been displaced elsewhere due to industrial downsizing into the workforce.