A couple of years ago a
survey of academic drug discovery in the US (1) highlighted the fact that most of these
efforts were at a very early stage of development. However, things have
progressed. An interesting article in C&EN (2) presents the history of the
drug discovery unit at Vanderbilt, one of the oldest and most successful of the
academic ventures. It nicely shows how patient work at the basic level, rather
than a rush to ‘translation” can eventually bear fruit. In this case it takes
the form of AstraZeneca licensing the academic center’s work on small molecules
for brain disorders such as schizophrenia.
The recent formation of an alliance of academic discovery groups should further facilitate progress (3 ).
(1)
Frye S, Crosby M, Edwards T, Juliano R. (2011) US
Academic Drug Discovery. Nat
Rev Drug Discov. 10(6):409-10
(2)http://cen.acs.org/articles/92/i3/Anatomy-Academic-Drug-Discovery-Program.html
(3) http://www.addconsortium.org/index.php