About this Research Topic

Background

Drug discovery and development involve complex processes, highly integrated interdisciplinary research, and collaborations between academic groups and the private sector. It is a long and resource-intensive endeavor characterized by a high attrition rate. Yet new strategies are being explored, aiming at accelerating the development of novel treatments, from the combination of artificial intelligence with cutting-edge experimental approaches, and the development of novel types of therapeutic agents to personalized medicine. Because drug discovery and development is a vast field with many stakeholders and potential conflicts of interest, it is important that the general public gains basic knowledge about the main concepts to be able to make informed healthcare decisions for themselves and family members, understand discussions in the news and social networks or proposals from policymakers and politicians. Furthermore, people are directly affected by the field, as patients seeking novel and better treatments, as volunteers in clinical trials, or as members of patient organizations. Building public knowledge and understanding about the field of drug discovery and development will also help to address growing public concerns about how health data should be collected and used.

The overall goal of this Research Topic is to introduce, in a simple yet accurate manner, drug discovery and development processes to the general public. The articles reported in this Research Topic should help non-scientists understand the science and various concepts behind modern drug discovery and the key steps in developing a drug.

Some articles will provide:

- An overview of the different types of therapeutic agents, about the entire process, from preclinical, clinical, to post-marketing stages.
- Insights about the cost of treatments and regulatory approval processes.

Other articles could cover more specific topics such as:

- How are small molecules discovered and developed?
- How are peptides discovered and developed?
- How antibodies and therapeutic proteins are discovered and developed?
- How are vaccines discovered and developed?
- Explanations about cell-based therapeutics.
- Ongoing work regarding gene therapy with potential ethical issues.
- What is precision or genomic medicine? What are the benefits and potential risks?
- Why do generic drugs cost less?
- What is drug repositioning or repurposing?
- Following the Covid-19 crisis, what have we learned and how to get prepared for pathogen X?
- Social equity in drug discovery: how are we tackling neglected and rare diseases?
- What are orphan drugs?
- What are the main experimental approaches used in drug discovery/preclinical research?
- Models in preclinical drug discovery, efficacy: does the drug work?
- Models in preclinical toxicity assessment: why drugs have side effects?
- The role of AI in drug discovery and development.
- How do clinical trials work? What is the approval process? How are they designed? Who pays for them? Which patients can get access and how? Advantages and risks of participating in clinical trials.
- Explanation about electronic health records and how they are used.
- After the clinical trials are completed, how decisions about the best treatments are made? Who makes them?
- What is evidence-based medicine?
- What happens after clinical trials – post-marketing surveillance
- What is Real World Evidence?
- Moving from drug-centered to patient-centered research: what does it mean?
- Beyond patients: environmental risks of human drugs, the notion of eco-pharmacovigilance
- Training and Education in drug discovery for non-science majors: where do we stand and where do we need to be?
- What are the expectations that patient organizations or private citizens have for healthcare and how can these be addressed during the drug development process?
- The future of drug discovery, the role of open science and open access to accelerate drug discovery, the role of academic research, and the private sector.

The article types welcome for this Research Topic are: Reviews, Mini-Reviews and Perspectives.

Keywords: Drug discovery, Drug development, General public, Therapeutic agents, Public health data sharing and use

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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