To mark its 10th anniversary, Drug Discovery & Development magazine invited industry vendors to reflect on the history and made predictions about future of the industry. Featured here are verbatim comments from this company.
Thermo Fisher Scientific, Scientific Instruments
Headquarters
Waltham, Mass.
Spokesperson
Rohan Thakur - Director, Global Small Molecules
Web site
About the company
Analytical instrumentation and LIMS provider for the drug discovery and development industry with a strong emphasis on mass spectrometry related solutions (LC-MS/MS) including multi-vendor services and validation. Thermo Scientific has been at the forefront of developing Triple Stage Quadrupole, Ion Trap, FTMS, and Orbitrap hybrid instrumentation for high throughput drug discovery, ADME, and DMPK workflows including liquid chromatography (UHPLC), TurboFlow technology, and Multiplexing product line and columns. Also the global leader in LIMS technology with Watson LIMS used in the top 20 pharmaceutical companies for PK. Other leading LIMS solutions include Galileo LIMS, Sample Manager, and Nautilus LIMS that support sample workflow and data management.
The company’s line of business as it was 10 years ago. Changes in life science/drug research that influenced business.
Thermo is a market driven company which has sought to enable the research to routine workflow – the introduction of breakthrough technology such as the LCQ ion trap in 1995 revolutionized drug metabolism and proteomics research enabling the proliferation of this technology to biologists, protein chemists, and the routine non-mass spectrometry user. This was followed more recently by revolutionary products such as the LTQ-FT, and LTQ-Orbitrap which made high resolution, accurate mass technology routinely available to academia and industry by significantly enhancing ease of use. Ten years ago, almost every pharmaceutical industry had a core mass spectrometry facility requiring the use of experts to run complex analytical instruments, while today, such instruments have become routine enough for, non-expert mass spectrometry users to get results quickly, enabling complex problem solving in almost every department involved with drug discovery and development. Translating these capabilities from what was predominantly small molecules to proteins (biologics) and related biomolecules has influenced the development of new technologies to address the pertinent needs
Scientific challenges in the next 10 years.
The globalization of the industry has put a significant emphasis on software which ensures seamless global transfer of data and facilitates the conversion of data into knowledge on a round-the-clock basis, Althoughthe pharmaceutical industry operates on a global basis, the regulations are still US and European driven.This means the software needs have to follow the established guidelines for compliance standards and requirements. The rise of bio-therapeutics (biologics) or peptide based therapies and Biosimilars will further continue to challenge an industry whose core competency thus far has been small molecules – this will require a radical shift in approach to discovery, development and delivery of these new therapies. The challenge moving forward is ensuring rapid turn-around of results in the form of reports upon which decisions can be made whether to move the drug candidate forward. The more information you have earlier in the process, directly impacts the cost of developing new drugs, so the challenge is converting the high volume of raw analytical data into a format that is easily communicated across a global organization. Furthermore, as discovering new drugs is getting more difficult from both an efficacy as well as regulatory perspective, data mining on a global level will continue to evolve, so that the correct decisions can be made in the most efficient manner without compromise.
Factor(s) that drove the development of technologies during the last 10 years and greatest area of growths.
As an instrumentation, software and services provider, we have been focused on providing technology that enables high sensitivity, high resolution and accurate mass capability with an emphasis on ease-of-use and workflows centered on the small molecules based drug discovery and development process. Automation has played a key role, which includes making the process reliable and providing data processing tools. The feedback from industry has been to do more with less, or in other words, increasing the efficiency of an established process. As this process moves towards investigating large bio-molecules (proteins) in a drug discovery process currently familiar with small molecules, the challenge now is seamlessly addressing both these needs. The research and development process of large bio-molecules will pose a different set of challenges which will have to be addressed, as this field remains a significant area of growth.
Bold Prediction: Where will drug research technology be in 10 years?
Combining the established knowledge based from small molecule research with the emerging field of peptide based therapeutics and metabolomics will drive the future of new drug development. There are differences in how biologics interact versus the traditional small molecule drug therapies of the past. Immune response to biologics is one such area which may move upstream in the drug research process, and since these biologics are not synthesized in the manner small molecules are currently produced, characterization of biologics will play a critical role. The addition of sugars, phosphate groups, and other structural modifications for biologics and their impact on efficacy, toxicity, availability, and formulations will require redesign of established workflows to address future needs.
