Drug dis­cov­ery in the age of coro­n­avirus

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De­vel­op­ing new drugs is in­cred­i­bly hard. That’s why, de­spite su­per­hu­man ef­forts from the in­dus­try, we’re still look­ing at 12-18 months min­i­mum be­fore we can re­al­is­ti­cal­ly hope for a vac­cine for Covid-19, and prob­a­bly months be­fore there’s a proven vi­able drug treat­ment.

But our in­creas­ing abil­i­ty to be­gin to in­dus­tri­al­ize the drug dis­cov­ery and de­vel­op­ment process through an en­gi­neer­ing ap­proach means that we have more hope for speed­ing up this process than ever be­fore — and not just to de­feat coro­n­avirus, but to ben­e­fit the de­vel­op­ment of all new med­i­cines in the fu­ture.

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