CONTEXT In recent decades, natural products have undisputedly played a leading role in the development of novel medicines. Yet, trends in the pharmaceutical industry at the level of research investments indicate that natural product research is neither prioritized nor perceived as fruitful in drug discovery programmes as compared with incremental structural modifications and large volume HTS sc...

In our last column (PharmaGenomics 4[1], 16–19 [2004]), we began to explore the shift to a broader-than-diagnostic view of the value of imaging technologies. It stands to reason that imaging should play some broader role. After all, as Robert Dunkle reports in a recent article, “Up to 70% of the experiments in pharmaceutical research and development result in an image as an output” (1). Of cour...

BACKGROUND Submission of study protocols to research ethics committees (RECs) constitutes one of the earliest stages at which planned trials are documented in detail. Previous studies have investigated the amendments requested from researchers by RECs, but the type of issues raised during REC review have not been compared by sponsor type. The objective of this study was to identify recurring sh...