The Drug Discovery Process: from Lead to the Clinic

Over the course of the past century, advances in the medical arts have substantially changed the arc of the human experience.  Indeed, average lifespans have more than doubled, some ailments like polio and smallpox have essentially been eradicated, and overall quality of life has substantively improved.  Yet, despite our current abilities, innumerable challenges remain.  They include cases of antibiotic resistance for which we have no available treatments, our inability to cure cancer, and the increased incidence of ailments such as obesity and depression that might result, in part, from elements of modern life.  

This course seeks to provide a full perspective on the current state of the drug discovery process, from how initial lead compounds are identified, to how they are optimized through both rational design as well as computational modelling methods, to how process-level scale chemistry is achieved to fuel clinical trials, to intellectual property and the FDA approval process, to the clinic, to ultimately addressing the ramifications of unintended side-effects discovered once used in a large population of patients.  Examples that will be discussed include antibiotics like Penicillin, the anticancer agent Taxol, the morning sickness pill Thalidomide, weight-loss and diabetes-fighting drugs such as Ozempic, immunosuppressants such as FK506, pain modulating medicines such as Aspirin and Oxycontin, depression treatments like Zoloft, and anti-HIV agents such as Truvada.