In this installment, I will discuss why it is difficult to discover, design and develop a drug, in view of our current knowledge of physiology.
With numerous, intertwined reactions happening, our body is a complex clockwork of biomachinery gears. What do you do, then, if some gears fail—that is, if you got sick? On one hand, it is a consolation that many gears are what biologists call 'redundant', which means that it's alright that a certain gear fails, because there are other gears that can take over its function. On the other hand, due to the intricacy of the gears, it is hard to pinpoint which gear is the problem, let alone fixing it. And the sheer number of gears: ICD-10 classifies tens of thousands diagnoses — tens of thousands ways the gears can fail — and those are only the ones we know; how about those we don't? Granted, some are not caused by our own gears failing, but by interferences of other, pesky gear systems: viruses, bacteria, misfolded proteins, errant microbiome, etc.; but the sense of magnitude is there.
