Question: How do you make new drugs

Graeme Dykes answered on 22 Jul 2024:

This is a small question with a big answer.
Usually it starts with medicine and what symptoms people show. Clinicians can link these to a change in behaviour of organs. Microbiology and pharmacology can then help to find molecular targets for drugs. We need tests or assays which monitor these targets.
Medicinal chemists prepare lots of compounds to be tested in these experiments. Once we find something which has the desired activity, we make small changes to improve activity and selectivity and to make sure that they work in live models. This is a loop where the outcome of each set of experiments helps the design of the test compounds. We need to make them safe to take and we need top make them on many kilo scales. They need to be approved by the authorities (e.g. Federal Drug Administration in the USA). We need to make sure that we have the rights to make these drugs or else we will never make any money to fund the next drug