Biomedical and pharmaceutical R&D companies are in a constant battle with the many diseases that affect human lives every day. The ongoing effort to find new treatments for all diseases means not only searching through countless combinations of chemical compounds but also rigorous testing and layers of government regulations. Every step of the Drug Discovery process requires results as close to perfection as possible.
Without ensuring a complete understanding of the new drug and all its effects, it is impossible to enter clinical trials and eventually bring it to market.
Every stage has many moving parts with different experts needed to perform a wide variety of tasks. For example, High Content Screening, toxicity assays, and sourcing animal models all require different highly technical backgrounds.
With so much knowledge needed from so many different areas, pharmaceutical companies often reach out to Contract Research Organizations (CRO) in order to ensure Drug Discovery is done correctly, effectively, and quickly.
What is a Contract Research Organization?
As the name implies, CROs work on a contractual basis, providing specialized knowledge and niche experience for specific steps in the Drug Discovery process. Typically associated with the pharmaceutical industrial or biomedical R&D, CROs help companies move faster and gain an edge over the competition in the race to bring a new drug to market.
Working with a CRO not only saves time and reduces costs, but also allows companies to work with niche experts for every step of the drug development process.
A biomedical company may not have the experience or knowledge needed to ensure viability through multiple assays, navigate government regulations, and understand complicated animal model supply chains. It’s in these circumstances that CROs shine, providing a way to quickly move Drug Discovery forward while also ensuring experts are working on every aspect of the job.
Preclinical CROs
Preclinical studies are a crucial step in the Drug Discovery process. It’s at this stage that a new drug and its effects will be seen in a living biological system. Preclinical studies may transform a new drug from a theoretical concept into a verifiable experiment.
This crucial stage of Drug Discovery requires careful consideration and experienced expertise. When done well, preclinical studies effectively and efficiently shift the new drug from showing potential benefits to providing observation based results.
Seeing how a new drug affects a biological system is important in order to gain a real understanding of its impact on humans. Choosing the right animal model is thus an extremely important decision for any drug before entering clinical trials.
The results of everything found at this stage allow scientists and researchers to gain valuable insight into the mode of action of a drug (MoA) and how exactly the drug and its effects could manifest themselves in future human patients.
Closely monitoring the pharmacodynamics and toxicity testing through multiple assays on live animal models takes the drug one step closer to entering clinical trials.
Preclinical CROs specialize in ensuring the entire process is smooth with verifiable data around every aspect of every test. The goal is to always provide clear information about the toxicity, efficacy, and safety of the new drug by utilizing specialized skill sets and highly technical knowledge.
Working with an experienced preclinical CRO like Biobide ensures everything about the new drug is well understood and properly documented. With testing and assays producing solid results, entering the next stage of the Drug Discovery process and meeting the strict government requirements is much easier.
Zebrafish CRO
Rather than mapping out every segment of the preclinical stage of Drug Discovery, working with a CRO lets experienced experts do what they do best as they test the new drug on live animal models.
Preclinical CROs not only save time and reduce fixed costs including experienced personnel, rent or expensive equipment, but also allow companies to work with multidisciplinary experts for every step of the drug development process. Different CROs may have specialties in different areas. For example, Biobide is an experienced preclinical CRO that specializes in zebrafish.
There are many benefits to using Zebrafish in your preclinical research, as zebrafish sit in a unique position of being genetically similar to humans while also being easy to use at larger scales. Zebrafish are an ideal animal model for Drug Discovery, sharing a large portion of their disease genome with humans.
Relying on Biobide as a preclinical CRO ensures the Drug Discovery process will continue at a quick pace and produce viable results. By using zebrafish as an animal model, all testing is statistically meaningful, easily repeatable and reproducible while maintaining relevant information about how the new drug could affect humans.
From target identification to project management and all the way to clinical trials, Drug Discovery involves experts and expertise from a wide variety of technical fields. Meeting every stage’s needs means finding the right people to perform the right tasks in order to effectively and efficiently bring a new drug to market.
