Animal Pharm: In Vivo Models in Drug Development
By John Hallock
Bio-IT World
(05/24/05)—With the costs of populating drug pipelines rising sharply, drug companies are exploring new in vivo animal models to guide early pre-clinical drug development. Despite a plethora of available technologies to discern biological mechanisms, the relevance of such technologies is only as good as the physiological models to which they are applied. A complete picture of the biological interactions occurring in drug action and toxicity requires the examination of intact multicellular organisms.
One scientist leading the charge for emerging surrogate in vivo models in drug development is Randall Peterson, assistant professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. After obtaining his Ph.D. from Harvard University in the laboratory of Stuart Schreiber, where he first demonstrated the feasibility of small-molecule screens in zebrafish, Peterson joined the lab of Mark Fishman (now the president of NIBR). Peterson is on the Scientific Advisory Board of Montigen Pharmaceuticals, and is a founder of Teleome Labs.
Peterson’s group is currently using zebrafish for an entirely new application: pre-clinical drug development. This zebrafish model is allowing phenotype-based discovery of lead compounds that can suppress disease phenotypes (see Nature Biotechnology, May 2004), as well as new approaches for testing compound safety. Bio-IT World contributor John Hallock spoke with Peterson about the key issues surrounding the use of in vivo surrogate models in drug development and drug safety.
