New approach to drug discovery urged by US academician

Garret FitzGerald, chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Director of the Institute for Translational Medicine & Therapeutics, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, has long said the current drug-development system in the USA is in need of change, "representing an unsustainable model."

Even though the number of drugs approved has risen in the last three years, overall, roughly the same number of drugs have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration each year since 1950, while the estimated cost, mostly because of the failure to bring new medicines all the way to market - has exploded.

As the dominance of large pharma erodes and the process of drug discovery and development moves to a more modular approach, initiatives such as the National Institutes for Health’s Clinical and Translational Science Awards are designed to enhance the ability of academia to play in this space. Novel approaches to raising capital and to distributing intellectual property are also emerging, says Dr FitzGerald.