Drug Discovery Strategies and Techniques

The investigations of new drugs have always received widespread attention, and a large number of techniques have been continuously applied to drug advances. After years of accumulated experience, Creative Biolabs has made tremendous progress in the field of drug prospecting. With dedicated scientists and expertise in drug discovery and design, Creative Biolabs has been focused on advancing technology to solve the challenges of drug progress.

General Process of Drug Development

As we all know, traditional drug discovery mainly involves repeated trials of biological materials. Contrary to traditional drug discovery, rational drug design begins with the assumption that the biological targets may possess therapeutic value. Drug discovery is generally regarded as a complex and arduous process, which mainly consists of four main stages: target molecule selection and verification; compound screening; preclinical research; clinical trials. First of all, the identification of disease-related targets requires various biological methods such as bioinformatics prediction and genome analysis. The next step is to select specific compounds from the molecular library using techniques such as virtual screening and high-throughput screening. Subsequently, pharmacokinetic studies and toxicity studies were carried out in animal models. Finally, drug candidates that have successfully passed all preclinical tests are used in clinical trials for patients.

Fig.1 Schematic representation of the drug discovery process. (Duelen, 2019)

Methods of Drug Discovery

The first step of new drug exploration is to screen new molecules from various compounds and natural products. X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methods are the most effective and direct methods for rational drug development based on structure. In addition, the application of machine learning (ML) in the field of drug discovery continues to grow, producing exciting results. It is worth noting that computational screening methods have been continuously explored and improved, and can now be used as a promising and complementary alternative to high-throughput biochemical compound screening (HTS). Computer-based drug design is closely related to multiple stages of drug discovery, such as the use of virtual screening for hit identification, affinity and selectivity hit-to-lead optimization, and optimization of other drug properties while maintaining affinity.

Fig.2 New techniques and strategies in drug discovery. (Du, 2020)

Service in Creative Biolabs

In the past few decades, great progress has been witnessed in the development of drugs and many new strategies have been successfully used for exploring new drugs. Creative Biolabs is a world leading service provider for drug development consulting. Our expertise includes but is not limited to those shown below:

• Virtual Screening
• High-throughput Screening
• Phenotypic Screening
• Structure-based Drug Design
• Fragment-based Drug Design
• Ligand-based Drug Design
• DNA-encoded Compound Libraries
• CRISPR in Drug Discovery
• Reporter Genes Assays

Based on numerous successful cases and professional knowledge, we have achieved excellent results in many projects. Our expert team offers the most suitable and effective solutions and advanced technologies which will ensure the progress of your project. Please contact us for more details.

References

1. Duelen, R.; et al. Medicinal Biotechnology for Disease Modeling, Clinical Therapy, and Drug Discovery and Development. Springer, Cham. 2019, 89-128.
2. Du, J.; et al. New techniques and strategies in drug discovery. Chinese Chemical Letters. 2020, 31(7): 1695-1708.