The current state of drug discovery and a potential role for NMR metabolomics

The pharmaceutical industry has significantly contributed to improving human health. Drugs have been attributed to both increasing life expectancy and decreasing health care costs. Unfortunately, there has been a recent decline in the creativity and productivity of the pharmaceutical industry. This is a complex issue with many contributing factors resulting from the numerous mergers, increase in out-sourcing, and the heavy dependency on high-throughput screening (HTS). While a simple solution to such a complex problem is unrealistic and highly unlikely, the inclusion of metabolomics as a routine component of the drug discovery process may provide some solutions to these problems. Specifically, as the binding affinity of a chemical lead is evolved during the iterative structure-based drug design process, metabolomics can provide feedback on the selectivity and the in vivo mechanism of action. Similarly, metabolomics can be used to evaluate and validate HTS leads. In effect, metabolomics can be used to eliminate compounds with potential efficacy and side effect problems while prioritizing well-behaved leads with druglike characteristics.