Bioinformatics Tools for Pharmaceutical Drug Product Development

Preface

For a new drug to be developed and brought to market, approximately US$1.8 billion and a minimum of 15 years in development are required. In most instances, only a few drugs make it to market because the process of creating a new drug can fail at different steps along the way, with most of them failing in the final stages of development. Some reasons for this can be attributed to the lack of extensive clinical data, unexpected toxicities and long-term side effects; as well as the highly competitive market, which puts a strain on the development of new drugs. A way to reduce some of the costs and increase the likelihood of success is to maximize the information gained via basic science and the design of better translational approaches and clinical trials. As such, bioinformatics approaches are becoming more essential in drug discovery and vaccine design, not only in academia, but also in the pharmaceutical industry. Bioinformatics involves the use of software tools and computer programming to understand biological data, particularly when the data is large and complex. The development of large data warehouses and algorithms to analyze large data, the identification of biomarkers and novel drug targets, computational biochemistry, genomics, drug discovery and design have all been at the forefront of translational drug discovery in recent years. Bioinformatics has revolutionized disease-based and drug-based approaches as well as improved knowledge of biological targets. ...