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In Drug Development, Computers Replacing Test Tubes

Daily Policy Digest

Health Issues

Tuesday, September 25, 2001

Chemists in pharmaceutical firms are trading in their test-tube-filled labs for computers these days, as they search for the next blockbuster drugs. It's a result of the "genomics revolution" -- the successful effort to sequence the human genome.

All the drugs that have been invented to date have come from targeting the protein products of only 500 genes.

Researchers guess that the human genome contains between 30,000 and 40,000 genes -- one-tenth of which are reckoned to be possible targets for new drugs.

Genomics could greatly reduce the cost of developing a new drug -- perhaps by $300 million, according to Boston Consulting Group estimates.

In the past, it might take some $200 million just to develop drugs for human testing -- and another $500 million or so to test their toxicity and effectiveness in human subjects.

Source: "Drugs Ex Machina," Economist, September 22, 2001.

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