Drug discovery: University lecture takes an inside view
A public lecture at the University of Greenwich promises to shed new light on the business of pharmaceutical drug discovery: described by an expert as “one of the most complex and risky processes undertaken on our planet”.
Professor Jeremy Everett will be giving the lecture, which is free and open to all, at the university’s Medway Campus at Chatham Maritime on Wednesday, 30 November. Titled How do we find new drugs? Lifting the veil on pharmaceutical drug discovery, the lecture will also explain how drugs are discovered, how they work, why failure rates for discovering and successfully marketing new drugs are so high, and how the situation can be improved.
Professor Everett is the Head of Pharmaceutical, Chemical & Environmental Sciences at Greenwich’s School of Science. He says: “Drug discovery is one of the most time-consuming, complex, expensive and risky activities that humans are involved in. Most projects end in failure.
“Finding a new drug from start to finish can take 15 years or more of research and development and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, before even one tablet is sold. The process involves the coordinated teamwork of hundreds of scientists and other skilled professionals. Even more striking is the risk: less than one in 20 drug discovery projects that make it to the stage of clinical testing will be successful. Of those that make it to market, only one in three are commercially successful.
“It’s a sobering thought that many pharmaceutical scientists will never work on a successful product, and it’s little wonder that the industry has been going through a difficult phase.”
Prior to joining the university, Professor Everett held a variety of technology leadership positions for Beecham and SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals and then Pfizer Global R&D, where he worked in drug discovery technologies and rose to the role of vice-president.
Professor Everett is also a Visiting Professor in the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College London and the author or co-author of more than 70 scientific publications, reviews and patents.
Alongside Professor Jeremy Nicholson of Imperial College, he was responsible for defining and naming the science of metabonomics, which studies the metabolic responses of living systems to disease, environmental change or genetic modification. He is a co-discoverer of pharmacometabonomics: the prediction of the effects of drugs on the body, which may help to deliver improved personalised medicine to people in the future.
The lecture takes place in the Pembroke Building at 6.30pm. If you would like to attend, please email science-public-lectures@gre.ac.uk and register your name.
For more details on the School of Science’s public lecture series please visit www.gre.ac.uk/schools/science/public-lectures
The School of Science runs a range of undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes, offering world-class professors, state-of-the-art laboratory facilities and excellent links to industry.
To find out about studying science at the University of Greenwich’s Medway Campus, please visit www.greenwich.ac.uk, email courseinfo@greenwich.ac.uk or call 020 8331 9000.
Story by Public Relations