Drug discovery today
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Drug discovery today · Jun 2007
ReviewEmerging trends in the therapy of COPD: bronchodilators as mono- and combination therapies.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic inflammatory disease that is characterized by progressive airway obstruction that, unlike asthma, is relatively insensitive to bronchodilators and to the classic anti-inflammatory therapy, corticosteroids. In this review we consider the potential of bronchodilator drugs and corticosteroid drugs that are in clinical development for COPD and discuss how the best treatments might be achieved with combinations of drugs that are either already launched or close to launch.
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The Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) has succeeded in developing global clinical data interchange standards that are ready for implementation. The various CDISC models are identified and explained in this article as well as how these models work together. In addition to developing the CDISC standards, CDISC is involved actively in many collaborative projects with other organizations as a result of their numerous alliances and partnerships. CDISC standards are supporting not only the pharmaceutical industry but also other initiatives and services in healthcare.
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Do certain kinds of food contain pharmacologically active substances in concentrations that are high enough to have druglike effects when consumed? Are biologically active compounds in food indicative of therapeutic value? Is traditional drug development suitable for testing the merits of food? Is it ethical to test food as a drug on patients? Will dietary disease management remain a pipedream? Is it a fact or fantasy that the Mediterranean diet is beneficial to health? Is a vegetarian diet an elimination therapy, or one of supplementation? What can be learned from animals? Are humans losing the capability of listening to their bodies? In this review, we will address these questions--providing food for thought.
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Hit discovery technologies range from traditional high-throughput screening to affinity selection of large libraries, fragment-based techniques and computer-aided de novo design, many of which have been extensively reviewed. Development of quality leads using hit confirmation and hit-to-lead approaches present their own challenges, depending on the hit discovery method used to identify the initial hits. In this paper, we summarize common industry practices adopted to tackle hit-to-lead challenges and review how the advantages and drawbacks of different hit discovery techniques could affect the various issues hit-to-lead groups face.