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Economists hope they can attract billions of dollars for drug R&D by securitizing research projects. Could they close the innovation gap in the process?
After decades of stubbornly slow progress in asthma drug development, recent results from a trial of GlaxoSmithKline's mepolizumab hint at a brighter future.
The developmental pipeline for drugs to treat autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) has more than doubled since April last year, and each candidate in clinical development targets a different mechanism of action. This article investigates the ASD market and provides an overview of experimental therapies.
The therapeutic index of drug candidates — a quantitative relationship between their safety and efficacy, such as the ratio of the highest exposure to a drug that does not cause toxicity to the exposure that has the desired pharmacological effects — is widely used to aid decision-making in drug discovery and development. Muller and Milton discuss key issues in the calculation and interpretation of therapeutic indices at different stages of the process.
This Review highlights the role of T helper 17 (TH17) cells and interleukin-17 (IL-17) in the pathogenesis of inflammatory diseases, and discusses key advances and challenges in targeting IL-17 in disorders such as psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis.
Bacterial degradative proteases are essential for growth and survival, representing attractive targets for the development of novel antibacterials. However, despite pharmaceutical successes with protease modulators in several diseases, this class of enzymes has not yet been targeted to treat bacterial infections. Here, Rubin and colleagues review the biological roles of key prokaryotic degradative proteases, highlighting recent advances and challenges in their therapeutic exploitation.
The transforming growth factor-β (TGFβ) signalling pathway is implicated in a variety of disorders, including cancer, fibrosis and inflammation, and has become an attractive target for drug development. Here, Akhurst and Hata present therapeutic strategies for intervening in this pathway and discuss agents currently under investigation while addressing the associated challenges in their development and application.
