Drug discovery in academia

Abstract

Participation of academic centers in aspects of drug discovery and development beyond target identification and clinical trials is rapidly increasing. Yet many academic drug discovery projects continue to stall at the level of chemical probes, and they infrequently progress to drugs suitable for clinical trials. This gap poses a major hurdle for academic groups engaged in drug discovery. A number of approaches have been pursued to overcome this gap, including stopping at the production of high-quality chemical probes, establishing the resources in-house to advance select projects toward clinical trials, partnering with not-for-profit groups to bring the necessary resources and expertise to develop probes into drugs, and drug repurposing, whereby known drugs are advanced into clinical trials for new indications. In this review, we consider the role of academia in anticancer drug discovery and development, as well as the strategies used by academic groups to overcome barriers in this process.