Drug Development: Lost in Translation?

“Arzneimittelforschung” is one of the few international journals dedicated to reports on all aspects of drug research. Traditionally, it has a focus on developmental aspects in this regard and still is one of the few media to support and further scientific aspects of drug development at all stages.

As such it could not only build up its reputation for being reliable, informative, modern and fast track publishing, but also put accents into place, e. g. by the section biotechnology. The journal also had to adopt the globalisation of media in an information society, mainly by moving its central language from German to English. Those successful decades of change and thriving have been scientifically ruled and mastered by Prof. Hans-Georg Classen, and I am honoured to be called into the scientific editor position, to run the journal together with Prof. Classen from now.

Ever changing tides in drug research require constant adjustments of scientific journals, and my honourable task will be to reflect the most recent and most relevant developments in this regard. Over the past decade we have seen clouds of doubt looming over big drug companies in that – despite increasing efforts and investments – the pipelines of new drugs get slimmer and slimmer. This increasing discrepancy between efforts and output at the patient care level is appalling and has triggered serious reactions by the major stakeholders: a common deficiency in the drug development process has been identified, in that the translation between preclinical and clinical stages of development has been claimed to be a major reason for expensive and avoidable late attrition of drug projects. Among the first actors on the plot were prominent representatives of the FDA (e. g. Janet Woodcock) and more recently the new director of the NIH, Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni. Companies have reacted in that they introduced translational medicine as a new tool to promote transitions between preclinical, early clinical and late clinical stages of development. It has been increasingly recognized, that data from in vitro experiments, animal models, both physiological and pathological models, do not provide enough evidence for successful human development of drugs. The major sources of attrition are the lack of human efficacy and the lack of human safety; it became obvious that a better prediction of human outcome from those early experiments and from early human studies would be the necessary tool to be developed for amelioration of this situation. What has been a fashionable term for some years, is now one of the prominent areas of change raising hope for better outcomes, which are full pipelines and – ultimately – greater impact on improved patient care.

All this needs to be reflected in a scientific journal dedicated to drug development issues, and at present there is no better place to enact such changes than in “Arzneimittelforschung”. Therefore my major task as a new scientific editor will be to encourage scientists to submit related papers to “Arzneimittelforschung”. Over time, this will hopefully be reflected in increasing impact factors, it will be mirrored by subtle changes in the editorial board. The more traditional aspects which had been itemized on the cover page of the journal will not be neglected, but translational medicine is an overruling field for many of those to be embedded in this overarching concept in the future. We sincerely hope that the scientific community, regulatory authorities, drug companies, funding agencies and other stakeholders in the innovation of the most important therapeutic intervention which is drug prescribing, will acknowledge those changes and increasingly support one of the few journals dedicated to drug research. It is certainly the only European journal now dedicated to translational research in medicine. These changes will not only aim at acquiring original papers in the field of translational medicine, but increasingly compile reviews and educational material suitable to promote the field with the support of authors and readers. Prof. Classen and I hope to positively contribute to this new idea and urgent necessity, namely to promote the impact of science into human health.

Prof. Dr. Martin Wehling, Mannheim (Germany)