Anticancer Drug Discovery using Chemical Genomics

Cancer is the leading cause of death in United States and World wide. Drug discovery and development for cancer therapeutics takes several years before a patient is benefited from a new drug. The average time length from start to finish is approximately 15 years. This time length includes 4-5 years of basic research, discovery, preclinical development and validation studies. Next, it takes approximately 7-10 years for a drug to go through human clinical trials. This time length is too long and need to be shortened to benefit patients quickly from new technologies and product development ideas. Furthermore, with the recent explosion of genomics and proteomics information, it is now becoming difficult to make rapid and logical decisions on hundreds of potential drug targets available. Thus, there is immediate need to develop and integrate tools and technologies that will not only reduce the time length but also the risk of late clinical drug failure. Chemical Genomics is an emerging field in which tools and technologies from biology and chemistry are utilized in a parallel and cyclic fashion very early in the development process. In addition chemical genomics proposes to integrate latest developments in tools and technologies from a variety of modern fields such as combinatorial chemistry, informatics, synthesis chemistries, cell based assays, microarrays, genomics and proteomics tools to accelerate drug discovery and development. Thus, in cancer therapeutics the aim of chemical genomics is not only to reduce the time length of pre-clinical development but also the risk of late clinical failure by making smart decisions early in the process.