BIG PHARMA : PART 1 but there are now other ways to approach drug discovery .
De novo : Thanks to advances in chemistry , scientists can also create molecules from scratch . Using sophisticated computer modeling , scientists can predict what type of molecule will work .
High-throughput screening : As the most common way that leads are usually found , advances in robotics and computational power allow researchers to test hundreds of thousands of compounds against the target to identify any that might be promising .
Biotechnology : Through biotechnology , scientists can also genetically engineer living systems to produce diseasefighting biological molecules .
Entering Early Safety Tests Once lead compounds are determined , they go through a series of tests to provide an early assessment of the safety of said lead compound . Scientists test absorption , distribution , metabolism , excretion and toxicological ( ADME / Tox ) properties of each lead .
These studies are performed in living cells , in animals and via computational models . Successful drugs must be absorbed into the bloodstream , distributed to the proper site of action in the body , metabolized efficiently and effectively , successfully excreted from the body and demonstrated to be non-toxic .
Lead compounds that make it successfully out of this round are then optimized to make them even more effective and safer . Hundreds of different variations of the initial leads are made and tested with biologists and chemists working together closely to test the effects of variations .
Pre-Clinical Testing Once optimized compounds have been narrowed down to a handful , researchers turn their attention to testing them extensively to determine if they should move on to testing in humans .
In vitro and in vivo tests are conducted , where in vitro tests are experiments conducted in the lab and in vivo studies are those performed in living cell cultures and animal models .
During this stage , researchers also must determine how to make large enough quantities of the drug available for clinical trials . The drug will need to be scaled up , as drugs on a small
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