drug discovery

Drug discovery is the long expedition from a disease problem to a molecule worth testing in people. Like searching for a needle in an enormous haystack of chemical possibilities, it gradually narrows millions of candidates down to a handful of promising ones.

Formally, it is the multi-stage process of identifying and developing new candidate molecules with therapeutic potential. Typical stages include choosing and validating a biological target, screening for early active molecules, improving those molecules through chemistry, and profiling their safety and behavior in the body.

It is slow, expensive, and risky: most projects fail along the way, and reaching an approved drug commonly takes well over a decade. Drug discovery refers to this early research phase; the later, larger human trials and manufacturing scale-up are usually grouped under drug development.