In the best of cases, taking a new drug from lab to clinic takes about six to eight years, a vast improvement over the roughly 20-year timeline decades ago. Drug development pace and efficiency are leaping even farther ahead, courtesy of quantum computing, artificial intelligence algorithms and 3D tissue printers, especially at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
Under the leadership of Director Daniel LaBarbera, PhD, the Center for Drug Discovery (CDD), which opened in fall 2021, puts CU Anschutz on the cutting edge of high-throughput drug discovery. Housed in the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, the CDD’s custom-built suite of integrated robotic and imaging systems can do in minutes what previously took one researcher hours to accomplish.
In this episode of the CU Anschutz 360 podcast, LaBarbera explains the CDD’s technological innovations as well as how it fits into the robust academic entrepreneurship ecosystem at CU Anschutz.
LaBarbera notes that most basic-science researchers on campus use innovative complex disease models that are low-throughput. “Our high-throughput science is driven by robotic automation, so what we’re able to do is harness academic innovation.
“In that initial phase (of drug development), you want your low-throughput assay to replicate some aspect of human disease that you’re interested in targeting,” LaBarbera said. “And then by doing so, we can validate potential active compounds, which we call hits. And the next phase is to validate those hits as what we call lead drug therapeutics.”
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CU Innovations moves therapies toward commercialization A few years ago, Daniel LaBarbera, professor and director of the Center for Drug Discovery, received a SPARK | REACH grant through CU Innovations. The program provides seed funding for unmet medical needs, including efforts to develop drugs and diagnostic products.
In his work at the CDD, LaBarbera collaborates with CU Innovations to create intellectual property for lead drugs that are being developed on campus. “Intellectual property is an important step in commercialization, and I think CU is doing a fantastic job in this area,” he said.
“CU Innovations really helps to move therapies toward commercialization with their expertise in identifying potential companies for licensing agreements, but also working with investors to put money toward the commercialization of innovation being developed at CU,” LaBarbera added. |
A phase after that is typically a daunting gap – called the “valley of death” – an expensive, and risk-laden translative section between the academic innovation and the commercialization of a new drug.
In the podcast, LaBarbera also talks about the drug development boosts provided by CU Innovations and Colorado’s recent federal designation as a quantum technology hub, spearheaded by the Elevate Quantum consortium.
To better understand the complex world of drug development, as well as to learn why LaBarbera sees bridges over the “valley of death” and expects faster-developed and better therapeutics in the near future, please listen to the full podcast.