NOVEMBER 2022LIFE SCIENCES REVIEW8IN MY OPINIONBy Carlos Pedraza, PhD. Director of CNS Biology at Alkermes.electing a new pharmacological target for drug discovery is one of the hardest jobs in pharma. This assertion while it may be generally accepted, is surely not fully appreciated nor completely understood. It doesn't help it that there's not an established method or a stepwise manual for succeeding in such endeavor and the prospects to embarking and resourcing it could be daunting.How do pharmaceutical companies decide what projects have the best value to pursue from inception all the way up to candidate nomination, IND and beyond? What's the secret sauce for success in an industry with high attrition rates at all stages of the process of drug discovery and development? Is it possible to achieve a productive balance of novel ideas-technologies and well validated pharmacological targets with a solid progression into clinical trial stages? These are important questions that could define the success, and even the survival or demise of small to mid-size companies looking to establish themselves as drug discovery enterprises. With this in mind one could divide the process of new target identification into several stages, all overlapping more or less with each other according to the specific company's strategic plan: Conception, experimental validation, assay development, MoA characterization, therapeutic proof of concept, IND enabling data generation and early clinical development. Each one of these topics comes with a long list of sub-divisions, milestones, SFROM IDEATION TO PORTFOLIO PROGRAM: INNOVATION VS VALIDATION IN EARLY DRUG DISCOVERYCarlos Pedraza
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