A Structured Approach to Achieve Shorter Drug Discovery Cycletimes

Biotechs have limited funding, and their investors must regularly be shown constant tangible project progress in the Drug Discovery phase. Biotechs whose projects lag, have their funding and future at risk. Likewise, large pharma must continually re-prioritize its portfolio of Discovery projects, and those that progress fastest typically have the best chance for survival. One irony of the entire drug discovery process is that despite the introduction of (or maybe because of) new “enabling” technologies across biology, chemistry, and computational sciences the average cycletimes of drug discovery projects from target identification to candidate selection has remained relatively static over the years, rather than becoming shorter. Yet some Discovery projects progress faster than others, and a number of factors for reducing cycletime are well within the control of the project investigators. What are these strategies?