New drugs are found through drug discovery research. Drug discovery and development traditionally began with identifying active components in conventional medicines or by chance. Later, to identify chemical libraries, including tiny compounds, natural products, or plant extracts having medicinal properties, classical pharmacology was employed. In the phases of drug development, discovery is the most basic process. These are performed and initiated in bioanalytical laboratories.
The drug development process phases are based on three essential principles:
- Target Identification
- Target Validation
- Lead Generation and Refinement
Target Identification:
In clinical trials, the failure of drugs is due mainly to ineffectiveness and safety issues. As a result, target selection and validation are crucial stages in drug discovery & development.
Drug targets must fulfill clinical and commercial requirements and be effective, safe, and valuable. A gene or protein that is a critical player in disease is found through target identification. Scientists and researchers then note the medicinal properties of the target.
A target is an all-encompassing phrase referring to various biological things, such as proteins, genes, and RNA. A good target must suit clinical and commercial needs, be effective and safe, and most importantly, be druggable. A druggable target is accessible to the potential drug molecule, whether a small molecule or a bigger biological one. When bound, it elicits a biological response that can be quantified in vitro and in vivo.
Target Validation:
The target must be prosecuted properly after being discovered in the drug discovery cycle. There are several ways to validate products, ranging from in vitro tools to entire animal models to controlling a target in ill individuals. A multi-validation strategy considerably increases confidence in the observed conclusion, even though each technique is valid in and of itself.
Advanced methods and technologies, including disease association, bioactive compounds, cell-based models, protein interactions, signaling pathways analysis, analytical model of genes, in vitro genetic manipulation, antibodies, and chemical genomics, are researched with the help of bioanalytical lab services. Antisense technology is a potentially powerful technique that utilizes RNA-like chemically modified oligonucleotides, designed to be complementary to a region of a target mRNA molecule. The antisense oligonucleotide binding to the target mRNA prevents the binding of the translational machinery, thereby blocking the synthesis of the encoded protein.
Lead Generation and Refinement:
Compound screening assays are created during the drug discovery process’s identification and lead discovery phase, which comes after the target validation step. Small molecule hits from an HTS are reviewed and improved into lead compounds using the Hit to Lead (H2L) method. The lead optimization procedure is then applied to these compounds.
Lead Optimization:
Lead optimization creates the drug candidate and performs experimental testing utilizing animal efficacy models and ADMET technologies.The phases of drug discovery and development are carried out in a bioanalytical laboratory.
