How Latest Drug Candidates Were Discovered? (Retrospective Review, 2016-2017)

Lead generation strategies

The authors found that 43% of drug candidates were ideated out of previously known starting points from literature, patent specifications, or previous programs.

Random screening (HTS) of large compounds collections (up to millions compounds) was second most efficacious category having produced 29% of clinical candidates, while focused screening and fragment-based lead generation approaches generated only 8 and 5% of drug candidates, respectively.

Knowing the 3D structure of a protein target is always a substantial advantage and so structure based drug design (SBDD) helped produce as much as 14% of clinical lead candidates (not taking into account general in silico efforts used in most other hit-generation strategies).

DNA-encoded library screening (DEL) approach, which included screening of the largest chemical libraries up to a billion of molecules with DNA-tags attached to them, is largely falling behind other research strategies with only 1% of clinical lead candidates produced in this period (which is quite in accordance with the fact that DEL is available to a very limited number of pharma and CROs, and also there are some technical issues in the way to be yet solved.)