Drug Discovery in the New Millennium
Steven G. Aitken · 2006
Introduction Over the years there have been numerous milestones in the development of what is now regarded as the modern day drug discovery process. Medicinal chemists recognise that their roots can be traced back to the late 1920s when Erlich1 pioneered the use of synthetic sulfonamides as antibacterial agents. In the late 1930s the discovery by Alexander Fleming2 of the penicillins heralded what would become the wide-spread exploitation of natural products as therapeutic agents. In early 1960s Snyder pioneered the use of grind and bind receptor binding assays3 while many also investigated the now familiar biochemical principle of enzyme inhibition. This article will concentrate on developments in the field of drug discovery since the mid 1980s.