Publications

In the absence of drugs to treat or prevent COVID-19, drug repurposing can be a valuable strategy. Despite a substantial number of clinical trials, drug repurposing did not deliver on its promise. While success was observed with some repurposed drugs (e.g., remdesivir, dexamethasone, tocilizumab, baricitinib), others failed to show clinical efficacy. One reason is the lack of clear translational processes based on adequate preclinical profiling ...

There is an urgent need to make drug discovery cheaper and faster. This will enable the development of treatments for diseases currently neglected for economic reasons, such as tropical and orphan diseases, and generally increase the supply of new drugs. Here we report the Robot Scientist “Eve” designed to make drug discovery more economical. A Robot Scientist is a laboratory automation system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to ...

Introduction: Neuroblastoma, the commonest paediatric extra-cranial tumour, remains a leading cause of death from cancer in children. There is an urgent need to develop new drugs to improve cure rates and reduce long-term toxicity and to incorporate molecularly targeted therapies into treatment. Many potential drugs are becoming available, but have to be prioritised for clinical trials due to the relatively small numbers of patients. Areas ...

Quantitative Structure Transcriptional Activity Relationship (QSTAR) involves relating the three data sources in early drug discovery namely (1) chemical structure (fingerprint features), (2) bioactivity (bio-assay read-outs) data for targets of interest, and (3) transcriptomic (gene expression) data of a set of compounds. In this paper, a gene-specific and fingerprint feature-specific joint model is presented as a tool to model the association ...

Dried blood spot (DBS) analysis has been introduced more and more into clinical practice to facilitate Therapeutic Drug Monitoring (TDM). To assure the quality of bioanalytical methods, the design, development and validation needs to fit the intended use. Current validation requirements, described in guidelines for traditional matrices (blood, plasma, serum), do not cover all necessary aspects of method development, analytical- and clinical ...

Background: Older patients are at an increased risk of developing adverse drug reactions (ADR). Of particular concern are the oldest old, which constitute an increasingly growing population. Having a validated clinical tool to identify those older patients at risk of developing an ADR during hospital stay would enable healthcare staff to put measures in place to reduce the risk of such an event developing. The current study aimed to (1) develop ...

This book provides an overview of pediatric drug development. The chapters aim to provide practical guidance to healthcare providers who are new to drug development and to drug developers who are new to pediatrics or intend to inform any stakeholder involved in pediatric drug development. This introductory chapter provides an overview of the “logic” of drug development in general and for pediatrics in particular. This chapter includes an ...

Pharmaceutical firms are extremely selective in deciding which patented drug candidates are taken up into clinical development, given the high costs and risks involved. We argue that the scientific base of drug candidates, and who was responsible for that scientific research, are key antecedents of take-up into clinical trials and whether the patent owner (‘internal take-up’) or another firm (‘external take-up’) leads the clinical development ...