What is a Biologic Drug Anyway?
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Own Definition. Recently I posted on “biologic drugs” which were approved in 2019. All was well in my little scientific universe, until I received this in an email: “You recently reported “14 novel biologic drugs,” referring to ‘novel’ biopharmaceuticals approved CDER. But, … You also…
Managing Liver Injury (DILI) Risk
Having a clinical drug-induced liver injury (DILI) signal is a surefire way to kill a drug candidate in non-serious indications like pain or chronic indications like diabetes, and will even give oncologists second thoughts as cancer patients are living longer. What can we do to prevent it? A widely accepted strategy for minimizing DILI risk…
Where Do Recent Small Molecule Clinical Candidates Come From?
Modern hit-finding technologies are incredible. Dean Brown and Jonas Bostrom at AstraZeneca have a very nice review out summarizing the hit-finding strategies for 66 clinical candidates published from 2016-2017. Some highlights include a clinical candidate from DNA-encoded libraries at GSK, the discovery of an RNA-binding drug candidate by PTC/Roche, and fragment-based programs with candidates 100,000x…