Open Access Journals Of Drug Discovery

 Before discussing innovation, the scope of drug discovery covered by this paper should be defined. The drug discovery process covers a broad range of disciplines from genomics and target discovery to pre-clinical testing. Within this space there are a variety of hardware, software and biological technologies. However, to keep this article to a manageable size, it will focus on developments primarily in assays and hardware used in target validation through screening and into profiling. This does not diminish the many important advances that have been made with RNA, cell based assays (especially the progress with stem cell), new biological approaches to target evaluation, data mining, image recognition software or other innovations. Innovation does not have a clear definition. This can lead to disagreement as to what is innovative. A certain amount of leeway is required. Common usage and dictionary definitions can range from definitions that are very loose as often used in a marketing context to very strict interpretations that would eliminate all but the most unique inventions. Probably the best definition to use is that an innovation must be at least a substantial improvement and not a small change over what is currently available. That still leaves room for a considerable difference of opinion so we should be flexible in what is considered innovation.