Updating the Drug Discovery Pipeline Model by the Application of Emergence Mapping.

The "drug discovery pipeline" is a model used to describe product development activities in the pharmaceutical industry. Research has shown that this model struggles to explain certain drug development behavior because it does consider various legal, economic, and social forces. This begs the question: How can a more-representative drug discovery model be produced and what insights could be derived from the new model? This report attempts to address this question by applying Phaal et al.'s method of mapping industrial emergence to the pharmaceutical industry. Case studies of both asthma medications and administration methods were used to provide the data for analysis. A timeline of significant events, i.e. those of a scientific, economic, social, or legal nature, was developed for each treatment and administration method. Using the data collected, emergence maps were created for each of the treatment methods. The results confirm that many important contributors to drug discovery lay outside the traditional drug discovery pipeline. Consequently, an adaptation to the model is offered combining the traditional drug discovery pipeline model with Phaal et al.'s method, thereby exploiting the benefits of both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]