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FEATURES |
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Playing the economics game with outsourcing
John K. Borchardt
Today's contract research organizations provide a range of services, such as early- and late-stage discovery, preclinical testing, all stages of clinical testing, postmarketing surveillance trials, manufacturing, sales, and marketing. Outsourcing to CROs will continue because of the increasing complexity of the drug development process, a growing number of global development projects, and the incentives of higher revenue gained through faster drug development.
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Blocking HIV's "scissors"
Jim Kling
Central to the formation of new infectious virions, HIV protease cleaves the gag-pol protein into smaller fragments that form part of the core of the new particle. Even as new drugs grab the headlines, protease inhibitors such as Crixivan will continue to be known as the drugs that gave humanity the first true hope of conquering HIV. |
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Outsourcing the search for leads
Hans Herklots
Chemists must enrich their compound files so that more meaningful leads arise from high-throughput screening assays. Although cheminformatics is becoming more sophisticated and efficient at predicting what molecular structures give the best response as a drug candidate, scientists searching for lead compounds really need more chemistry, new molecular structures, and a richer chemical world from which to build a better compound file. Moreover, this rich new chemical world actually comes at an affordable price compared with the skyrocketing investments in combinatorial chemistry.
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Polymorphic predictions
Katriona Knapman
Polymorphism, the ability of a molecule to crystallize into more than one crystal arrangement, can have a profound effect on the shelf life, solubility, formulation properties, and processing properties of a drug. Different polymorphs can have different rates of uptake in the body, leading to lower or higher biological activity than desired. In extreme cases, an undesired polymorph can even be toxic. If a company knows all of the possible polymorphs of a drug, it can foresee any potential problems in manufacturing and can also ensure greater patent protection for the drug.
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DEPARTMENTS |
7 |
Content in Context
The postindividual age
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9 |
Feedback from our readers |
11 |
News in Brief
- Heart disease mutations teased out
- Optically tracking cells
- Cosmic radiation and pilots
- Linking learning disabilities to schizophrenia
- Predicting epileptic seizures
- Following the fragile
- From the 39th American Society for Cell Biology Annual Meeting
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21 |
Insight andAnalysis
Rational drug design |
25 |
To Your Health
Should the eyes have it? |
59 |
Money Matters: Corporate
When the going gets tough |
63 |
The Tool Box
On the cutting edge: Lab on a chip
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67 |
The Time Line
The discoverer of Aureomycin |
73 |
Sites and Software
Guineapigs dot-com |
77 |
Ready to Read
- Central Nervous System Diseases: Innovative Animal Models from Lab to Clinic
- A Brief History of Drugs: From the Stone Age to the Stoned Age
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79 |
New Product Notes |
81 |
On the Calendar |
84 |
Diseases and Disorders
A salty kiss of death |
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