Drug Discovery: A Modern Decathlon

摘要

Over the last 15 years, the number of newly approved drugs has decreased, while the development costs have increased. Recent data from 2012 indicate a reversal of the trend, although it is too early to be certain.Although the development chain for new drugs has for a long time been regarded as the domain of the pharmaceutical industry, many participants work on drug development—from small start-up companies that focus on a single companies that focus on a single product or product segment to highly specialized companies that provide a defined service (independent of the product), such as clinical trials. The possible contribution of German academia, inspired by successful examples in the USA,is thus being discussed more and more. The journal Angewandte Chemie provides a platform for this discussion and four related articles were published in 2012. We aim to highlight, from the point of view of German academic pharmaceutical sciences, the contexts in which contributions from academia are particularly reasonable.