Drug Development Today and Tomorrow

The cost of prescription drugs has become a hot-button issue for many American consumers. Thanks to modern medicine, our lifespan and quality of life continue to improve. However, this creates a new problem: our aging population now requires an ever-increasing array of new medications. Today's drug discovery process is time consuming and tremendously expensive. It can take up to 20 years and cost millions of dollars to bring a single drug candidate to market. Pharmacogenomic approaches might make this process more efficient by enabling researchers to:

• Identify genes involved in disease
• Understand how genes and their products are affected by various drug candidates
• Effectively choose target populations to be used in clinical trials

Pharmacogenomics has the potential to provide concerned consumers with what they want: cheaper drugs that work better. Let's take a look inside the world of drug discovery and find out more.

Supported by a Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) [No. 1 R25 RR16291-01] from the National Center for Research Resources, a component of the National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services. The contents provided here are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of NCRR or NIH.