Drug discovery, from serendipity to targeting strategies

Drug discovery is a multidisciplinary activity, based on different disciplines, including bioinformatics, (bio)chemistry, and pharmacology. It exploits both scientific and technological advancements to move away from serendipity towards a rational approach, integrating ligand-based with target-based approaches. The discovery pipeline can be accelerated by using active learning techniques for lead identification. However, drug discovery remains a pretty long, expensive and high-risk research.