Two Main Approaches to Drug Discovery

Chris Manfuso is an experienced pharmaceutical executive and the national director of sales at Enovachem Pharmaceuticals. At Enovachem and its sister company, Nubratori RX, Chris Manfuso leads business development and revenue-generating activities.

One of the key activities in the pharmaceutical industry is the discovery of new therapies for existing conditions. Discovering new drugs is a lengthy process and it usually follows one of two approaches. One approach is target-based drug discovery or TBD. TBD involves screening compounds for specific activity against disease pathogens. The advantage of TBD is that it can be automated and thousands of compounds can be screened relatively quickly.

The other approach is phenotypic screening. In phenotypic screening, researchers try to identify molecules with particular biological effects in cell-based assays. No target mechanism is being sought but rather a biological effect. Phenotypic screening usually results in identifying compounds with higher in vivo therapeutic effects but it’s more cumbersome and time-consuming than target-based discovery. Additionally, phenotypic screening doesn’t effectively distinguish modes of action in the compounds it studies.