Main Article Content
Abstract
Drug discovery is a very prolonged process that is very time-consuming and expensive. It mainly includes the pre-discovery stage, the drug discovery stage, pre-clinical development, clinical development, and regulatory approval. In the pre-clinical phase, the potential drug candidates are thoroughly refined, optimized, and rigorously tested in a laboratory setting using various animal models and tissue samples. The four phases of clinical trials—Phases I, II, III, and IV—provide a structured framework for assessing the safety and efficacy of drugs in human subjects. Early drug discovery research programs generate information to form the hypothesis that the destruction or activation of pathways or proteins exerts a therapeutic effect in disease conditions. Thereby, the selection of target molecules undergoes validation processes before drug discovery.