Research boosts ‘game-changing’ technology to strengthen drug development

Researchers have boosted pioneering technology to show whether potential treatments are worth progressing into human trials, in a game-changing move that could dramatically reduce the high failure rates in drug discovery and development.

The WEHI-led team is using protein degrader technology to test the efficacy and safety of drugs by better mimicking clinical settings, with a collaborative Australian project already using the system to establish promising drug targets for a range of hard-to-treat cancers.

At a glance

  • Pioneering technology can assess how effective and safe a drug target could be for patients, far earlier in the research process.
  • A collaborative effort is currently leveraging the technology to validate drug targets for a range of cancers.
  • The protein degrader technology offers a revolutionary approach for substantially reducing the pharmaceutical industry’s high drug development failure rate.

Almost 95% of biomedical projects fail before entering human clinical trials with the average cost of bringing a new drug to market estimated to be around US$1.8bn. A key issue is the difficulty of assessing a drug’s true safety and effectiveness in preclinical studies.

While conventional drug development aims to inhibit the activity of disease-causing proteins, protein degrader technology looks to completely destroy those proteins, with precision targeting. The technology enables scientists to deliver far more relevant results from pre-clinical testing, to potentially bring safe and effective new treatments to patients faster.

In a new study published in Nature Communications, WEHI researchers Dr Charlene Magtoto, Dr Rebecca Feltham and Dr Christoph Grohmann (now at Nurix Therapeutics) have significantly extended our understanding of one type of protein degrader technology by expanding on current validation strategies, which could boost the number of drugs successfully entering human trials.

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