One of the first records of a drug being discovered comes from ancient China. About 3500 BCE, the legendary Chinese emperor Sheng Nong discovered a snake near his palace and tried to beat it to death. The snake survived and came back a few days later, seemingly well. The emperor realized that the snake had eaten a plant and wondered if it had healing properties.
Indeed, it did: the plant is called San Qi, and its extracts are used in remedies for cuts, bruises, and scratches. Egyptian and Greek ancient medicine discovered a number of medicinal plants and compounds that are still used today. In India, Ayurvedic medicine has been used for about 5,000 years.
Vaccines and The Early Pharmaceutical Industry
The Renaissance period encouraged scientific investigations that led to the first known vaccine for smallpox in 1796. After noticing that people who worked with cows got a mild disease called cowpox and never caught the serious disease, smallpox, Edward Jenner inoculated a boy with smallpox to create smallpox immunity.
Other early drug discoveries included John Hunter’s 1768 discovery that citrus fruit could treat the vitamin deficiency disease scurvy. In 1864, Louis Pasteur discovered that microorganisms could cause disease, leading to the first rabies vaccine.
However, by 1900, there were still only a few drugs available. Aspirin was invented in 1897 by Felix Hoffman, a chemist working for Bayer. Digitalis made from the foxglove plant was used to treat heart conditions. Quinine taken from tree bark was used to treat malaria. Morphine, first extracted from opium in 1803 by German pharmacist’s apprentice Friedrich Serturner, was used to treat severe pain.
The First World War, which lasted between 1914 and 1918, was fought without antibiotics to treat wound infection. Alexander Fleming did not discover that penicillium mold would kill staphylococcus bacteria for another decade.
Early Synthetic Drug Development
According to the UC Irvine School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences, in 1900, life expectancy in the U.S. was less than 50 years, and it is over 77 years today. Modern synthetic drug discovery and development is one major contributor to the increase in life expectancy and reduction in disease and suffering.
Increased ability to develop synthetic and other drugs rely upon sophisticated ways to determine chemical structure, and increasingly powerful computers and methods of analysis. Post World War II through the 1970s, empirical methods of drug discovery uncovered a number of important drugs, including ibuprofen and prednisone.
In the 1970s, increasingly sensitive laboratory equipment and separation techniques to isolate, identify, and screen biologically active materials provided new avenues for drug development. By the 1980s, computer-aided drug design became possible. In the 1990s, high throughput screening and small molecule library synthesis led to the discovery and development of more drugs, including drugs treating rare diseases.
21st Century Drug Discovery and Development
Rapid advances in many areas of technology, including biotech and computing, have driven 21st century drug development. The Human Genome Project was completed in 2001, signaling the advent of pharmacogenomics. CRISPR and Cas12a are two genetic technologies that have been used to edit genes, create gene therapies, and treat genetic illnesses.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are also revolutionizing drug discovery and development. Large pharmaceutical companies and innovative startups alike are leading the way in discovering and developing new drugs to treat illness, as well as to prevent it.
Techniques like RNAi (RNA interference) would not be possible without sophisticated computing technology. RNAi enables companies like ArrowHead to develop ways to silence genes that can cause heart disease. Spark Therapeutics was founded to discover drugs to treat rare inherited eye diseases, resulting in the biotech drug Luxturna, which helps to preserve vision.
Robots are revolutionizing drug discovery as well. The Maholo LabDroid in Japan is conducting induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell drug discovery. And, AI drug discovery software is able to provide transformative insights from the massive amounts of data created during the drug discovery process. Cerella, an augmented chemistry software, can help maximise thesuccess of preclinical drug discovery efforts.
Along with other innovators, Cerella is using its trademarked deep learning method to improve upon conventional modelling methods. Drug discovery and development has been a slow, but steady process over thousands of years. The latest technological advancements such as AI-enabled drug discovery software are making the process faster, more efficient, and more innovative every day.
