Discussion

As most of Big Pharma reduce their internal efforts in, or exit entirely, neuroscience drug discovery, the onus falls upon biotech companies and academic drug discovery to provide the next generation of drugs to satisfy the considerable unmet need. The opportunities within academia range from translating the earliest and most basic of biological understanding of disease processes into early stage drug discovery projects to delivering on mature projects that have been terminated within Big Pharma as they exit particular neuroscience disease areas (taking over where Big Pharma left off). This presentation will discuss the challenges of academic drug discovery as viewed from the perspective of the University of Sussex's Translational Drug Discovery Group.