Experimental Therapeutics

The development and use of new medicines remains a formidable challenge. In 2001, the pharmaceutical industry spent $44 billion on research and development of new agents. How well that money will not be apparent for another decade or more. It now costs an average of Ĺ550 million ($800 million) to bring a drug to market, more than twice as much as in 1987. Much of this money (perhaps up to 70%) is spent on drugs that fail on the path to licensing. As a rule of thumb, for every 10,000 molecules screened in a given programme in the laboratory, only one will survive to launch. To minimise costs, companies need to catch potential failures, due either to lack of clinical effect or toxicity, in the early discovery phase, long before they reach patients.Experimental Therapeutics is primarily written for clinicians and scientists with an active interest in experimental medicine as an introduction to this dynamic and competitive discipline. It is hoped that this book will act as a useful primer for anyone with a novel idea for advancing the pharmacological management of disease.