Current Trends in the Development and Biochemistry of Drugs

Abstract

Drug discovery (DD) has an unknown history since the origin of mankind with the process of the trial-and-error method. Modern-day DD primarily straddles three main periods, i.e., the nineteenth century, based on DD by chance by the medicinal chemists; the twentieth century, which spans the exploration and reporting of new drug structures; and finally, the twenty-first century, in which all known structures in conjunction with novel techniques, viz., molecular modeling, combinatorial chemistry, and automated high-throughput screening, led to huge advances in DD. In the start, the scientists examine the natural products themselves to find the exact effects. The isolation of active phytochemicals started in the early nineteenth century, while the advancement in chemical and biological sciences has led the modern DD and development. Moreover, recombinant DNA technology revolutionized the development of potential drugs with higher accuracy and precision. In addition, the onset of the “omics” (proteomics, genomics, metabolomics, etc.) era has boosted the increase in biopharmaceutical drugs approved by the FDA/EMEA for clinical uses. Currently, digital and disruptive technologies such as network pharmacology and molecular docking studies are changing the scenario of DD and development by producing more efficient, personalized drugs with little or no harm at all.