Undruggable: The Next Wave of Drug Development

Welcome to Undruggable, a special edition podcast series produced by The Scientist’s Creative Services Team. This series is brought to you by Amgen, a pioneer in the science of using living cells to make biologic medicines. They helped invent the processes and tools that built the global biotech industry, and have since reached millions of patients suffering from serious illnesses around the world with their medicines.

Beginning with the introduction of aspirin at the start of the 20th century, there have been three major waves of innovation in drug discovery. While breakthrough discoveries have been made, 85% of disease targets are still considered undruggable, which represents an ongoing barrier to discovering medicines for complex diseases like cancer and autoimmune conditions. Ray Deshaies, who has spent decades in academic research and is a senior vice president at Amgen, believes that the fourth wave of innovation is here, led by new types of multispecific medicines that will radically alter our concept of how drugs can work and pave the way for new solutions.

 

We are in an exciting time for drug discovery and development. Once thought to be an insurmountable task, scientists are successfully tackling the problem of undruggable disease targets. In this episode, Ray Deshaies talks to Ryan Potts, executive director and head of Induced Proximity Platform at Amgen. They trace the history of modern drug design all the way up to today’s fourth wave, and discuss what makes a disease target undruggable.

 

To dive further into this topic, please join Amgen scientists at the Undruggable Q&A webinar discussion on November 3, 2021. Register for this event here: Undruggable Q&A 1