Question: Why do you think developing new drugs is so hard these days? So many things are still yet on answered like a cure for cancer

Daren Fearon answered on 16 Jun 2014:

Excellent question! There is an idea in drug discovery that says “we have eaten all the low hanging fruit”. This of-course doesn’t mean real fruit but is comparing diseases and drug targets to fruit on a tree. The drug targets that are “low hanging fruit” are easy to reach and so we have found cures or treatments for them already. Now what is left is the “high up fruit” – the more challenging drug targets. Finding drugs for these is proving much more challenging.

Another problem is that diseases such as cancer and bacterial infections are able to develop resistance to the drugs we have, so we have to start over and find new ways of treating them.

Cancer is also becoming a bigger problem as life expectancy is increasing. As people get older they are more likely to develop cancer and so we are seeing more cases than we used to.

This doesn’t mean we have stopped trying though! We just have to work hard and be creative in the way we go about drug discovery.