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Anticipating change in drug development: the emerging era of translational medicine and therapeutics

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Abstract

Despite the large investments made in drug discovery in the past decade, there is still a dearth of new drugs. This highlights the persistence of a model of drug development that has not adapted to changes in science, public perception of drug companies or the marketplace. A high profit margin in the United States has shielded drug development from the usual economic pressures that would ordinarily drive reform. The strategy of merger, pursued by many companies to compensate for the failure to develop new drugs, has, in most cases, compounded the problem, imposing geographic and cultural segregation on an already inefficient process.

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Figure 2: The spectrum of translational medicine and therapeutics.
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Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to R. Glynne, K. Horgan and D. Rader who made many useful suggestions that were incorporated into this article.

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  1. The Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, Room 805, Biomedical Research Building 2/3, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 19104, Pennsylvania, USA

    Garret A. FitzGerald

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  1. Garret A. FitzGerald
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FitzGerald, G. Anticipating change in drug development: the emerging era of translational medicine and therapeutics. Nat Rev Drug Discov 4, 815–818 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd1849

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