In medicine, biotechnology and pharmacology, drug discovery is the process by which drugs are discovered and/or designed. In the past most drugs have been discovered either by identifying the active ingredient from traditional remedies or by serendipitous discovery. A new approach has been to understand how disease and infection are controlled at the molecular and physiological level and to target specific entities based on this knowledge.

The process of drug discovery involves the identification of candidates, synthesis, characterization, screening, and assays for therapeutic efficacy. Once a compound has shown its value in these tests, it will begin the process of drug development prior to clinical trials.

Despite advances in technology and understanding of biological systems, drug discovery is still a long process with low rate of new therapeutic discovery. Information on the human genome, its sequence and what it encodes has been hailed as a potential windfall for drug discovery, promising to virtually eliminate the bottleneck in therapeutic targets that has been one limiting factor on the rate of therapeutic discovery. However, data indicates that "new targets" as opposed to "established targets" are more prone to drug discovery project failure in general. This data corroborates some thinking underlying a pharmaceutical industry trend beginning at the turn of the twenty-first century and continuing today which finds more risk aversion in target selection among multi-national pharmaceutical companies.

Genomics is a science that studies the structure and function of genomes and, in particular, genes. A genome is an organism’s complete genetic signature. It is the palate of information an organism can call on in order to ensure its own survival and growth. The genome is the collection of information that an organism can pass on to its offspring before birth.

Meanwhile, proteomics is essentially protein analysis and, until recently, could be described as a broad classification for a set of technology and bioinformatics platforms aimed at the comprehensive molecular description of the actual protein complement of a given sample. Presently, it is typically associated with systems biology. In this context, powerful new technologies for differential complexity reduction are expected to solve some of the most pressing problems in drug development. The resulting analytical challenges are of unprecedented complexity. However, considerable progress has been made in characterizing rapid posttranslational protein modifications in highly complex molecular signatures as key disease-related biomarkers from experimental model systems or clinical samples.

This report looks at how advances in genomics and proteomics are transforming the landscape of drug discovery and drug development. The report analyzes the basics and processes of both genomics and proteomics, the various technologies involved in the process of drug development, genomics and proteomics. The report aids in the understanding of drug development with the help of genomics and proteomics.



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46 pages

Publication Date : January 2008