Improving the Efficiency of the Drug Development by Expanding the Scope of the Role of Medicinal Chemists in Drug Discovery.

Improvements in the efficiency of the drug discovery process are needed in order to deliver life-saving medications to patients in a more cost-effective manner. While there are many reasons that the efficiency of this process has not gotten better, this Viewpoint proposes that the lack of integration of the three major disciplines (discovery, development, and clinical trials) plays a significant role in the ongoing high rate of failure in clinical trials for innovative drugs. Several specific proposals are made that may help to provide more integration, so that the gears of the human-driven drug discovery machine may mesh better in the future.