Bridging Biological Insight with Pharmaceutical Innovation: Accelerating Translational Impact

Abstract

The intertwining of the pharmaceutical sciences and the world of biological research is transforming the way therapeutic solutions are thought, optimized and dispensed. Over the past decade this type of interface has graduated from optional-collaboration to an operational necessity that drives innovation from drug discovery, to biotechnology, to pharmacology, and to translational research. Advances in molecular biology and high through-put analytics and predictive modelling have lent mechanistic clarity to the pharmaceutical decision-making processes from early design to clinical application. Pharmacology and molecular biology make up the mechanics of modern therapeutic development. Omics-controlled insights genomic, proteomic and metabolomic layers have enabled the creation of disease networks research with unique depth. These data streams are contributing towards pharmacogenomic models that will allow patient-specific responses to be predicted and that will enable the pharmaceutical industries to design pharmacotherapeutics with better efficacy and less inter-individual variability. Likewise, functional genomics with a powerful new tool, called CRISPR, live-cell imaging, and structural biology have increased our ability to identify druggable targets as well as understand the kinetics of ligand-receptor interaction on an atomic level.