THE ENGINE THAT POWERS OUR DRUG DISCOVERY AND DEVELOPMENT
Despite numerous advances made in medicine during the last century, there are many serious diseases that either cannot be cured or are poorly controlled by currently available therapies. A key reason for this has been an incomplete understanding among researchers and clinicians of the mechanisms and pathways that underlie these diseases, and of genetic and physiologic differences between people that can affect their responses to treatment.
Drug discovery and development at Millennium focuses on solving these problems by:
|
|
Understanding at the molecular level the steps and missteps in natural processes that may occur as a disease develops and progresses;
|
|
|
Figuring out, in each disease process, the best step in which to intervene with a drug that will arrest or reverse a specific part of the process;
|
|
|
Developing drugs that can zero in on the chosen step in the disease process with minimal side-effects; and
|
|
|
Determining what type of patient is most likely to respond well to the new drug.
|
In tackling these challenges, we are also committed to achieving high overall productivity. For much of the last two decades, the output of new drugs from the pharmaceutical industry has remained relatively constant, while the total cost of R&D has increased more than sevenfold, even after adjusting for inflation. Recent estimates put the cost of developing a new drug at over $800 million. Many analysts view the falling productivity of pharmaceutical R&D as one of the major factors driving consolidation in the industry.
At Millennium, we have focused on improving R&D productivity and drug candidate quality by streamlining and automating bottlenecks in the drug discovery and development process, and by identifying and eliminating as early as possible those projects that are destined to fail.
To meet our goal of high-productivity development of breakthrough treatments for serious diseases, we have built a potent R&D engine that drives all of our drug discovery and development efforts. This engine is powered by Millennium's world-class expertise in disease biology and an industry-leading technology platform.
