Challenges for Academic Drug Discovery

摘要

There is much discussion of opportunities and need for drug discovery in research universities to help fill the gap created by the reduction of medicinal chemistry activities at pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Such transla-tional science is also being promoted by funding agencies, such as the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), to the point where translational plans are common and often necessary in grant applications. In this atmosphere, it is difficult for universities to not become more involved in drug discovery. However, the melding of the traditional focus on basic research with more-applied activities presents numerous challenges.