2023-06-16 10:01:51
Faster testing due to lower radioactive dose of active substances
‘In recent decades it has proved difficult to get a drug onto the market for more complex diseases,’ says Wouter Vaes. ‘On the one hand we strive for the highest possible safety, on the other hand the extensive regulations lead to long development times. Technological developments can help to safely shorten development times. The AMS is a huge device that actually performs very simple measurements. By using AMS, we can dose a radioactive version of the active ingredients in medicines at a much lower dose. And if you can administer a lower radioactive dose, you can carry out the experiments required for the approval of a drug a few years earlier. The development process of a medicine can be shortened in this way.’
Kill early, kill cheap
The difficulty of drug development does not lie in synthesizing an active substance. The tricky part is to guarantee that a drug is effective and at the same time not toxic, but does show the correct kinetic behavior in the body. TNO helps the pharmaceutical industry on the basis of the ‘kill early, kill cheap’ principle: the faster you can eliminate the malfunctioning molecules, the better. While Wouter deals with kinetics and metabolism, his colleague Jennifer McCormack-Venhorst works at the front end of the process. Thanks to her experience in the pharmaceutical industry, she has a good overview, from research to patent, and ensures that dead-end ‘drug targets’ are eliminated as quickly as possible.
#Medicines #developed #years #faster