Significance of Technology to Business Strategy
Major aim for a pharmaceutical company is to produce ‘medicines’ which have quality, which are affordable to mass, even in poor and developing countries and which are well supported by medicos and patients all over the world. Major areas where pharmaceutical companies focus are - formulations, new drug discovery, analytical research and biotechnology which include vaccines and plant/animal tissue culture etc. Research and development (for new drug discovery) is one of the most critical component for these companies and is one of their major asset which will provide a cutting edge to the company as well as long term sustainability. Structure based rational drug designing has provided these companies a new and most emerging approach for the discovery of new drug candidates. This technology uses structural biology combined with many other disciplines like molecular modeling, chemistry etc to speed up the new drug development processes. Drug discovery from early ages was based on a trial-and-error approach of naturally derived materials and substances till a systematic pharmacological evaluation of both natural and synthetic compounds came into existence. Traditional methods for discovery of drugs that exert therapeutical effects relied mainly on chance dependent random screening processes (Kaul 9-105). Based on this approach the average design cycle for a drug is more than 12 years, which is too slow to meet today’s urgent demand of fighting with various diseases. Of the about 5000 - 10 000 compounds studied, only one suitable candidate would get onto the market and hence, the costs of drug discovery was immense. In today’s rapidly changing health care scenario, with an urgent need for developing new therapeutic agents to fight against deadly diseases, it becomes very difficult for these pharmaceutical companies to use combinatorial chemistry as their best approach to discover new drug molecules that too at economical cost and faster rate. With the pressure to reduce costs and speed up drug discovery cycles, provides a strong demand for rational techniques for drug design and discovery. Last decade has seen a great advancement in molecular biology and computer sciences, which has made it possible to use rational approach of drug designing at commercial level. Modern drug discovery, on the other hand, has been transformed by the industrialization and automation of research. Most important part of rational based drug designing is the target molecule, which may be either a protein or a DNA molecule, identified by using basic genomics and proteomics techniques. One thing has to be kept in mind is that the presence of target protein should be critical for the extent or severity of that disease. Identification is then followed by the structural study of the target by looking into its three-dimensional crystal structure. The structural information about the target is exploited to design potential drug molecules that regulate the specific function of that target protein, such that the severity of disease can be effectively controlled. The compounds which are designed on the basis of active site of that crucial protein and on the basis of molecular modeling techniques are studied for their specific interactions with the crucial residues (amino acids in case of protein), present in the active site and the degree of interactions made by it, including both specific and non-specific interactions. Synthesis of novel compounds is done by the using chemical methods and these compounds are then subjected to qualitative and quantitative estimations using various techniques. These data, in turn, suggest ways to refine the lead compound to improve its binding efficiency to the target protein. The refined lead compound is then synthesized and tested for biological efficacy in various in vitro and in vivo assay systems, and finally the most promising lead is generated for clinical trials in humans (Monteith 4). And remember this all takes around 1 to 3 years of extensive work with very less input of money and manpower. Strategy of using structure based drug designing as a new technology can be used by pharmaceutical companies which can provide them with the competitive edge over the others.
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