title: Disciplined approach to drug discovery and early development.
abstract: Our modern health care system demands therapeutic interventions that improve the lives of patients. Unfortunately, decreased productivity in therapeutics research and development (R&D) has driven drug costs up while delivering insufficient value to patients. Here, I discuss a model of translational medicine that connects four components of the early R&D pipeline-causal human biology, therapeutic modality, biomarkers of target modulation, and proof-of-concept clinical trials. Whereas the individual components of this model are not new, technological advances and a disciplined approach to integrating all four areas offer hope for improving R&D productivity.
authors.affiliation: Merck Research Laboratories, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Email: robert.plenge@merck.com.
authors.forename: Robert M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Plenge
mesh_terms: D015195:Drug Design; D055808:Drug Discovery; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D057170:Translational Research, Biomedical