Pharmacy — pipeline medicines

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New medicines

The ability to discover new chemical entities increasingly depends on a greater understanding of biological and disease processes, together with an ability to synthesise molecules relevant to areas predicted to have importance in modifying disease. The low probability of success demands a scale of operation large enough to generate sufficient compounds of interest to provide a chance that a compound will eventually attain regulatory approval. The future success of any pharmaceutical company is therefore very much based on the richness of its product pipeline.

A number of leading pharmaceutical companies have set aggressive goals to quadruple the number of new medicines launched annually. This is as much about ensuring that new chemical entities brought to market meet unmet needs as it is about speeding up development and registration. It is likely that an increased use of the internet will soon transform clinical trials from laborious exercises in paperwork and patient recruitment into a more efficient exchange of electronic communication and data analysis, thus expediting regulatory agency review of new drug applications.