UCF researchers reducing the drug development process

Researchers at the University of Central Florida (UCF) have led a breakthrough in reducing the drug development process, which currently takes at least a decade and more than US$1 billion to complete.

Neuromuscular junction studies are mainly concerned with understanding the connection between the nervous system and the muscular system. By modelling this interaction in the lab, the scientists hope to investigate subtle changes in muscle functional outputs in response to treatment with novel modulatory and inhibitory compounds. Such a system may help further research efforts aimed at the development of effective treatments and reducing the overall cost of clinical trials.

Dr James J Hickman, Professor of Chemistry, Biomolecular Science and Electrical Engineering at UCF, said modern clinical trials have success rates of around one in five. “If we can improve this success rate, we believe the cost per drug will be dramatically reduced and the development process significantly streamlined since far fewer clinical trials will produce negative results.”

Dr Hickman and the team at UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center have been working on developing a system to monitor the neuromuscular junction functions in the lab for the past 20 years. Dr Hickman explained, “It is no use developing a system that produces functional cells if you have no means to monitor that functionality.”

He said the natural environment of neuromuscular junctions (ie, in our body) allows for a continuous bombardment of signals delivering information to and from the body, and this is hard to replicate in the lab. There are thus some underdeveloped cultured neuromuscular junctions, leading to inconsistent cultures and making it hard to replicate or determine a working simulation for repetition.

Research in the area of neuromuscular junctions is connected to the eventual development of ‘body-on-a-chip’ technology, the aim of which is to utilise human cells and hopefully remove animals from preclinical testing.

“The pharmaceutical industry is in desperate need of highly predictive preclinical screening systems to streamline the drug development process and shorten current validation protocols,” Dr Hickman said.