Keywords
history
contemporary
perspectives
challenges
How to Cite
Abstract
The evolution of drug discovery has proceeded for decades. The process has involved the invention of new theories, technologies, disciplines and medicines. These advancements play significant roles in drug discovery today as well as in the future. In this review, the important achievements of ancient Egyptian, Greek, Arabic, Indian, and Chinese medicines were discussed. Then, the development of key concepts, theories or technologies as well as breakthroughs in drug discovery research has been reviewed. Lastly, the current outlook and obstacles in drug discovery studies have been discussed in this article. This review provides an understanding of drug discovery research from a historical perspective and current contexts.
References
Abbo, S., Gopher, A., & Bar-Gal GK. (2022). What Is the Agricultural Revolution? In Plant Domestication and the Origins of Agriculture in the Ancient Near East (pp. 11–20). Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108642491.004
Adam, M. (2005). Integrating research and development: the emergence of rational drug design in the pharmaceutical industry. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 36(3), 513–537.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2005.07.003
Alhakamy, N. A., Curiel, D. T., & Berkland, C. J. (2021). The era of gene therapy: From preclinical development to clinical application. Drug Discovery Today, 26(7), 1602–1619.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drudis.2021.03.021
Amar, Z., & Lev, E. (2017). Arabian Drugs in Medieval Mediterranean Medicine. In Hillenbrand, C. (ed.), Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture. Edinburgh University Press.
Beck, H., Härter, M., Haß, B., Schmeck, C., & Baerfacker, L. (2022). Small molecules and their impact in drug discovery: A perspective on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the Bayer Chemical Research Laboratory. Drug Discovery Today, 27(6), 1560–1574.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drudis.2022.02.015
Belleli, R., Fisch, R., & Szucs, T. D. (2015). Regulatory watch: Efficiency indicators for new drugs approved by the FDA from 2003 to 2013. Nature Reviews. Drug Discovery, 14(3), 156.
https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd4563
Bose, R., & Bose, K. (2022). A Brief Introduction to Recombinant DNA Technology. In Bose, K. (ed.), Textbook on Cloning, Expression and Purification of Recombinant Proteins (pp. 1–12). Springer Nature Singapore.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4987-5_1
Brune, K., Renner, B. & Tiegs, G. (2015). Acetaminophen/paracetamol: A history of errors, failures and false decisions. European Journal of Pain, 19(7), 953-965.
https://doi.org/10.1002/ejp.621
Buja, L. M. (2021). The cell theory and cellular pathology: Discovery, refinements and applications fundamental to advances in biology and medicine. Experimental and Molecular Pathology, 121, 104660.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yexmp.2021.104660
Campbell, I. B., Macdonald, S. J. F., & Procopiou, P. A. (2018). Medicinal chemistry in drug discovery in big pharma: past, present and future. Drug Discovery Today, 23(2), 219–234.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drudis.2017.10.007
Chang, S.-L. (2016). Chinese herbal medicine including historical aspects. In A. Inui (Ed.), Herbal medicines: New horizons (pp. 1-7). Springer Nature.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-4002-8_16
Clardy, J., Fischbach, M. A., & Currie, C. R. (2009). The natural history of antibiotics. Current Biology, 19(11), R437–R441.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2009.04.001
Danhof, M., Klein, K., Stolk, P., Aitken, M., & Leufkens, H. (2018). The future of drug development: the paradigm shift towards systems therapeutics. Drug Discovery Today, 23(12), 1990–1995.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drudis.2018.09.002
Drews, J. (2000). Drug discovery: a historical perspective. Science (New York, N.Y.), 287(5460), 1960–1964.
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.287.5460.1960
Felice, F., Micheli, G., & Camilloni, G. (2019). Restriction enzymes and their use in molecular biology: An overview. Journal of Biosciences, 44(2), 38.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12038-019-9856-8
Frye, L., Bhat, S., Akinsanya, K., & Abel, R. (2021). From computer-aided drug discovery to computer-driven drug discovery. Drug Discovery Today: Technologies, 39, 111–117.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ddtec.2021.08.001
George, R., Hehlgans, S., Fleischmann, M., Rödel, C., Fokas, E., & Rödel, F. (2022). Advances in nanotechnology-based platforms for survivin-targeted drug discovery. Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery, 17(7), 733–754.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17460441.2022.2077329
Gerald, M. C. (2013). The Drug Book: From Arsenic to Xanax, 250 milestones in the history of drugs [pp. 1-528]. Sterling.
Gershell, L. J., & Atkins, J. H. (2003). A brief history of novel drug discovery technologies. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, 2(4), 321–327.
https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd1064
Hallmann-Mikołajczak, A. (2004). Ebers Papyrus. The book of medical knowledge of the 16th century B.C. Egyptians. Archiwum Historii i Filozofii Medycyny, 67(1), 5–14.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15586450/
Hamon, M., & Hauser, P. V. (2019). Cell Therapy: Past, Present, and Future. Current Transplantation Reports, 6(2), 109–118.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40472-019-00235-4
Hardy, K. (2021). Paleomedicine and the Evolutionary Context of Medicinal Plant Use. Revista Brasileira de Farmacognosia, 31(1), 1–15.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s43450-020-00107-4
Henig, I., & Zuckerman, T. (2014). Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation—50 Years of Evolution and Future Perspectives. Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal, 5(4), e0028.
https://doi.org/10.5041/RMMJ.10162
Henninot, A., Collins, J. C., & Nuss, J. M. (2018). The Current State of Peptide Drug Discovery: Back to the Future? Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, 61(4), 1382–1414.
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jmedchem.7b00318
Hill, R. G., & Richards, D. (2021). Drug discovery and development: Technology in transition (3rd ed.). Elsevier Health Sciences.
Hood, L., & Rowen, L. (2013). The human genome project: Big science transforms biology and medicine. Genome Medicine, 5(9), 79.
Jaiswal, Y. S., & Williams, L. L. (2017). A glimpse of Ayurveda – The forgotten history and principles of Indian traditional medicine. Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine, 7(1), 50–53.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtcme.2016.02.002
Jourdan, J.-P., Bureau, R., Rochais, C., & Dallemagne, P. (2020). Drug repositioning: a brief overview. Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, 72(9), 1145–1151.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jphp.13273
Katz, L., & Baltz, R. H. (2016). Natural product discovery: past, present, and future. Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology, 43(2–3), 155–176.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-015-1723-5
Kim, J. H., & Scialli, A. R. (2011). Thalidomide: the tragedy of birth defects and the effective treatment of disease. Toxicological Sciences : An Official Journal of the Society of Toxicology, 122(1), 1–6.
https://doi.org/10.1093/toxsci/kfr088
Klaus Pors. (2011). Chapter 4: Drug discovery into the 21st century. In Kapetanovic, I. M. (Ed.), Drug discovery and development – Present and future (pp. 69–96). InTech.
Li, H., Wei, W., & Xu, H. (2022). Drug discovery is an eternal challenge for the biomedical sciences. Acta Materia Medica, 1(1), 1-3.
https://doi.org/10.15212/AMM-2022-1001
Makurvet, F. D. (2021). Biologics vs. small molecules: Drug costs and patient access. Medicine in Drug Discovery, 9, 100075.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.medidd.2020.100075
Malandraki-Miller, S., & Riley, P. R. (2021). Use of artificial intelligence to enhance phenotypic drug discovery. Drug Discovery Today, 26(4), 887–901.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drudis.2021.01.013
Masic, I., Skrbo, A., Naser, N., Tandir, S., Zunic, L., Medjedovic, S., & Sukalo, A. (2017). Contribution of Arabic Medicine and Pharmacy to the Development of Health Care Protection in Bosnia and Herzegovina - the First Part. Medical Archives (Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina), 71(5), 364–372.
https://doi.org/10.5455/medarh.2017.71.364-372
McPherson, A., & Gavira, J. A. (2014). Introduction to protein crystallization. Acta Crystallographica. Section F, Structural Biology Communications, 70(1), 2–20.
https://doi.org/10.1107/S2053230X13033141
Metwaly, A. M., Ghoneim, M. M., Eissa, I. H., Elsehemy, I. A., Mostafa, A. E., Hegazy, M. M., Afifi, W. M., & Dou, D. (2021). Traditional ancient Egyptian medicine: A review. Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences, 28(10), 5823–5832.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sjbs.2021.06.044
Moffat, J. G., Rudolph, J., & Bailey, D. (2014). Phenotypic screening in cancer drug discovery — past, present and future. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, 13(8), 588–602.
https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd4366
Ong, Y. C., & Gasser, G. (2020). Organometallic compounds in drug discovery: Past, present and future. Drug Discovery Today: Technologies, 37, 117–124.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ddtec.2019.06.001
Ou-Yang, S.-S., Lu, J.-Y., Kong, X.-Q., Liang, Z.-J., Luo, C., & Jiang, H. (2012). Computational drug discovery. Acta Pharmacologica Sinica, 33(9), 1131–1140.
https://doi.org/10.1038/aps.2012.109
Pan, Z., Li, M., Jin, Z., Sun, D., Zhang, D., Hu, B., Li, Z., Jing, Y., & Sun, S. (2022). Research status of Chinese medicine formula based on network pharmacology. Pharmacological Research - Modern Chinese Medicine, 4, 100132.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.prmcm.2022.100132
Patwardhan, B., & Khambholja, K. (2011). Chapter 1: Drug discovery and ayurveda: Win-win relationship between contemporary and ancient sciences. In I. Kapetanovi (Ed.), Drug Discovery and Development - Present and Future (pp. 9-24). InTech.
Pearce, J. M. S. (2016). Greek medicine: a new look. Brain, 139(8), 2322–2325.
https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/aww114
Pettersson, M., & Crews, C. M. (2019). PROteolysis TArgeting Chimeras (PROTACs) — Past, present and future. Drug Discovery Today: Technologies, 31, 15–27.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ddtec.2019.01.002
Pina, A. S., Hussain, A., & Roque, A. C. A. (2009). An historical overview of drug discovery. Methods in Molecular Biology (Clifton, N.J.), 572, 3–12.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-60761-244-5_1
Pitman, V. (2014). Early Greek medicine: Evidence of models, methods and materia medica. In Francia, S. & Stobart, A. (Eds.), Critical approaches to the history of Western herbal medicine: From classical antiquity to the early modern period (pp. 1-304). Bloomsbury Academic.
Poduri, R. (2021). Historical Perspective of Drug Discovery and Development. In Drug Discovery and Development (pp. 1–10). Springer Singapore.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5534-3_1
Romano, J. D., & Tatonetti, N. P. (2019). Informatics and Computational Methods in Natural Product Drug Discovery: A Review and Perspectives. Frontiers in Genetics, 10, 368.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2019.00368
Schaduangrat, N., Lampa, S., Simeon, S., Gleeson, M. P., Spjuth, O., & Nantasenamat, C. (2020). Towards reproducible computational drug discovery. Journal of Cheminformatics, 12(1), 9.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13321-020-0408-x
Sinha, S., & Vohora, D. (2018). Drug Discovery and Development. In Vohora, D. & Singh, G. (eds), Pharmaceutical Medicine and Translational Clinical Research (pp. 19–32). Elsevier.
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-802103-3.00002-X
Śledź, P., & Caflisch, A. (2018). Protein structure-based drug design: from docking to molecular dynamics. Current Opinion in Structural Biology, 48, 93–102.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbi.2017.10.010
Sun, H. H., Meng, J., & Yan, K. (2020). The Book of Chinese Medicine: The Timeless Science of Balance and Harmony for Modern Life (Vol. 1, pp. 1-525). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Swinney, D. C., & Anthony, J. (2011). How were new medicines discovered? Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, 10(7), 507–519.
https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd3480
Swinney, D. C., & Lee, J. A. (2020). Recent advances in phenotypic drug discovery [version 1; peer review: 2 approval]. F1000Research, 9 (Faculty Rev), 944.
https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.25813.1
Talele, T. T., Khedkar, S. A., & Rigby, A. C. (2010). Successful applications of computer aided drug discovery: moving drugs from concept to the clinic. Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry, 10(1), 127–141.
https://doi.org/10.2174/156802610790232251
Tan, S. Y., & Rogers, L. (2007). Louis Pasteur (1822-1895): the germ theorist. Singapore Medical Journal, 48(1), 4–5.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17245508/
Totura, A. L., & Bavari, S. (2019). Broad-spectrum coronavirus antiviral drug discovery. Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery, 14(4), 397–412.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17460441.2019.1581171
Triggle, D. J. (2007). Drug Discovery and Delivery in the 21st Century. Medical Principles and Practice, 16(1), 1–14.
https://doi.org/10.1159/000096133
Tschanz, D. W. (1997). The arab roots of European medicine. Aramco Services Company.
Tse, E. G., Korsik, M., & Todd, M. H. (2019). The past, present and future of anti-malarial medicines. Malaria Journal, 18(1), 93.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-019-2724-z
Umashankar, V., & Gurunathan, S. (2015). Drug discovery: An appraisal. International Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, 7(4), 59–66.
https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:55703027
Valent, P., Groner, B., Schumacher, U., Superti-Furga, G., Busslinger, M., Kralovics, R., Zielinski, C., Penninger, J. M., Kerjaschki, D., Stingl, G., Smolen, J. S., Valenta, R., Lassmann, H., Kovar, H., Jäger, U., Kornek, G., Müller, M., & Sörgel, F. (2016). Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) and His Contributions to the Foundation and Birth of Translational Medicine. Journal of Innate Immunity, 8(2), 111–120.
https://doi.org/10.1159/000443526
Van Drie, J. H. (2007). Computer-aided drug design: the next 20 years. Journal of Computer-Aided Molecular Design, 21(10–11), 591–601.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10822-007-9142-y
Vasan, K., Gysi, D., & Barabasi, A.-L. (2023). The Clinical Trials Puzzle: How Network Effects Limit Drug Discovery. iScience, 26(12), 108361.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2023.108361
Vemula, D., Jayasurya, P., Sushmitha, V., Kumar, Y. N., & Bhandari, V. (2023). CADD, AI and ML in drug discovery: A comprehensive review. European Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 181, 106324.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejps.2022.106324
Villoutreix, B. O. (2021). Post-Pandemic Drug Discovery and Development: Facing Present and Future Challenges. Frontiers in Drug Discovery, 1.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fddsv.2021.728469
Wang, L., Wang, N., Zhang, W., Cheng, X., Yan, Z., Shao, G., Wang, X., Wang, R., & Fu, C. (2022). Therapeutic peptides: current applications and future directions. Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy, 7(1), 48.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41392-022-00904-4
Woollard, P. M., Mehta, N. A. L., Vamathevan, J. J., Van Horn, S., Bonde, B. K., & Dow, D. J. (2011). The application of next-generation sequencing technologies to drug discovery and development. Drug Discovery Today, 16(11–12), 512–519.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drudis.2011.03.006
Xu, H.-Y., Zhang, Y.-Q., Liu, Z.-M., Chen, T., Lv, C.-Y., Tang, S.-H., Zhang, X.-B., Zhang, W., Li, Z.-Y., Zhou, R.-R., Yang, H.-J., Wang, X.-J., & Huang, L.-Q. (2019). ETCM: an encyclopaedia of traditional Chinese medicine. Nucleic Acids Research, 47(D1), D976–D982.
https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gky987
Yan, S.K., Liu, R.H., Jin, H.Z., Liu, X.R., Ye, J., Shan, L., & Zhang, W.D. (2015). “Omics” in pharmaceutical research: overview, applications, challenges, and future perspectives. Chinese Journal of Natural Medicines, 13(1), 3–21.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S1875-5364(15)60002-4
Yildirim, R. (2013). Studies on De Materia Medica of Dioscorides in the Islamic era. Asclepio, 65(1), p007.
https://doi.org/10.3989/asclepio.2013.07
Yip, D. W., & Gerriets, V. (2022). Penicillin. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing.
Zhu, Y. P., & Woerdenbag, H. J. (1995). Traditional Chinese herbal medicine. Pharmacy World & Science : PWS, 17(4), 103–112.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2024 Array