Dr. Cathy Tralau-Stewart, chief scientific officer at life science company ValiRx, describes the evolution of target validation in drug discovery, ways of tackling project attrition, and the role of human organoid models in future drug discovery strategies.
Key insights:
- Although there has been developments in patient genomics and AI-driven technologies to identify drug targets, there remains a need to properly validate models of human disease which can be used prior to resource expenditure.
- The increased number of molecular pharmacological tools available has enabled increased dissection of the role of specific drug targets.
- Research from AstraZeneca suggests that the application of the 5Rs framework has decreased the overall failure rate in their portfolio.
- Organ-on-a-chip models, developed an in vivo organ-like microenvironment, are an alternative approach to animal models - however they are still limited as a 2D system.
Drug discovery is a challenging process, with a low probability for any individual project to result in the successful development of a useful novel therapeutic. Very few areas of innovation have such a high failure rate from idea concept through to marketed product. However, success is very worthwhile and can be hugely valuable for human health (as well as in a financial sense).