Challenges with risk mitigation in academic drug discovery: finding the best solution

Abstract

A drug discovery program is initiated once a druggable target is unraveled through either academic research or from clinical observations [1]. Academic research is all-encompassing and covers a wide range of research areas and investigates various aspects of a target or pathway of interest. The research is not driven by any return on investment or its failure to adapt to established investigational platforms. Pharma-driven research, on the other hand, is a more profit driven focus on targets and diseases affecting large population groups. Pharma-academia collaborations surfaced in the last decade as a means to alleviate issues arising from low returns anticipated from high corporate R&D budgets and patent expirations. Overall, the pharma-academia collaboration is complementary and mutually beneficial [2], with the successful and innovative early-stage academic discovery projects finding their way for further development in spin-off biotechnology companies or big Pharma, for the more complex and timeand costintensive late-stage drug development involving clinical trials. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) initiatives like the Molecular Libraries Program [3] that were set up to accelerate academic small molecule screening campaigns provided not only chemical compounds for mechanistic studies but also enabled access to excellent assay development guidelines and funding opportunities for academic scientists who are interested in probe and drug discovery. As the specialized screening centers setup under the Molecular Libraries Screening Center Network, transitioned to the production phase, the vast majority of nonprofit universities and institutes supported establishment of academic screening centers that vary in their capabilities and infrastructures. The academic Drug Discovery consortium [4] has listed around 150 drug discovery centers/ programs that operate across United States, Europe, and Australia. The academic discovery, chemical biology, and informatics programs have contributed greatly toward expanding the boundaries of target identification, discovering novel chemistries and expanding the chemical space, as well as have contributed greatly to the development of novel algorithms for data integration and analysis [5,6] There has also been a significant contribution toward approvals for marketed drugs in strong Pharma-academia collaborations. Given the large numbers of basic researchers with years of expertise in diverse areas of research, a disproportionately small number of targets and probes have made it from bench to bedside. The challenges lie in the expectations and pressures of academic responsibilities, limited funding, and lack of comprehensive institutional programs to guide the researchers in taking their innovative targets and research to significant drug discovery milestones.