It takes a village to raise a drug discovery idea. A whole ecosystem of nimble and diverse organizations gathered in Boston on Nov. 2-3 to report on their efforts to boost drug discovery at the 4th Drug Discovery Innovation Programme. Creative and original approaches spanned the range of specialized trades required to translate ideas to candidate therapies. This event illustrated how this network of talents and ingenuity deployed in numerous distinct scientific areas is moving along with the shared goal of promoting the development of new therapies. Innovative phenotypic screenings, 3-D human tissue microenvironment, highly sensitive compound tracing methodologies, leading Software as a Service chemo-informatics and new RNA-Seq library construction protocol were among the topics raised during the two-day event. Panelists agreed that continued efforts to promote data quality and standards in the discovery part of drug R&D is a prerequisite to promoting translational medicine and success rates.

Scientist.com’s Manuel Duval, PhD, Director of Data Science/Bioinformatics served on a panel entitled, “Translating Drug Discoveries into Medicines,” with the consensus being that the drug discovery community needs to collaborate actively on data and quality standards to ensure creative solutions, such as Scientist.com. The Scientist.com marketplace supports researchers in all phases in their drug discovery programs, including bioinformatics.