The pharmaceutical industry's (pharma's) endeavor to discover, develop, and provide access to therapeutic agents has had a significant and lasting impact on society.  As an example, pharma's rapid response to the AIDS crisis has enabled many HIV positive patients to turn this fatal disease to one that can be managed chronically with proper adherence to medications.  Additionally, significant philanthropic endeavors continue to be undertaken by pharma to treat underdeveloped world maladies.  However, it has not all been good news for pharma with significant well-publicized drug withdrawals and recent settlements that have tarnished its reputation.  These setbacks have also been coupled with lower output (fewer drugs approved with a larger investment) from pharma's research and development organizations.  Despite these recent challenges there remain significant reasons for optimism for pharmas role to play in supporting the future of healthcare.  High unmet medical needs remain to be addressed and this is coupled with advances in science that provide great opportunity to discover and develop valuable medications that will be part of our unmet medical needs solution.  Chemists are central to healthcare and pharma success.  Improving our success rate of molecules reaching the market is critically dependent upon chemistry (reducing attrition) as well as how chemists translate some of the exciting scientific discoveries into therapeutics.  Chemists can take a leadership role helping pharma through these recent challenges and I will proffer some opportunities that chemists are well-positioned to address.

Pharmaceutical research and development: Past and present realities and future aspirations

245th National Meeting (2013)

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