Thursday, 5 September 2013

Drug Discovery Technology – Target Identification and Validation

Pharmaceuticals and healthcare are two fields that have been receiving attention past several years. With technological breakthroughs in fields like biotechnology, computational chemistry, molecular modeling and genomics, the area of drug discovery promises reductions in costs as well as the times involved to bring the drugs into the market.

Drug discovery technology has evolved greatly over the years and today, seeks to develop new models which significantly reduce the costs involved. In the past, most of the drug discovery procedures were based on screening products derived from plants and microorganisms. This process still continues today but with much better efficiency, thanks to the new drug discovery technology.

Today, chemists and biologists work together to fully understand the mechanisms of a disease before synthesizing potential drug candidates. Molecular modeling makes it possible to study the structure and properties of molecules in a sample with the help of computer programs. The data hence obtained is analyzed to predict the structure of a possible drug candidate. This is known as target identification. Once such potential drug candidates are obtained, target validation is take up, which aims to prove that the target is appropriate for the development of new drugs.

Both of these processes need to be done with utmost care and accuracy in order to discover new and effective drugs which are affordable. High Content Screening is one technology that has made the process of drug discovery much faster producing accurate results. Automation of this process also makes is highly cost-effective.

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