Antibiotics and Antibiotic Resistance

Drug Screening and Discovery

All pharmaceutical researchers know the feeling. Somewhere out there must be that elusive molecule — one that will inhibit this enzyme or activate that receptor in the way they want, and without causing unwanted side-effects. But finding it is another matter. For small-molecule drugs — the mainstay of the pharmaceutical industry — time-consuming and expensive screening is needed to pick out promising candidates from the vast number of natural and synthetic compounds available. Testing large numbers of compounds to see if they produce an appropriate biochemical or cellular effect is usually one of the first steps in the drug-discovery pathway, and ways of making this screening faster, more effective and less expensive are in continual development.