I would agree that universities do a large part of the basic science behind new drugs, but they do VERY little pre-clinical work (pretty much anything beyond simple receptor/enzyme bind studies).
Pre-clinical work is done by CROs and biotech/pharma. The resources required to do pre-clinical work is enormous. Membrane barrier penetration, microsomal metabolism of drug product require a very large investment and there aren't any universities I know of that have large enough R&D programs to support it.
Interesting. I'm guessing the pharma industry uses the term pre-clinical differently, I was just using it to mean anything that happens before clinical testing, which is how it's used in Wikipedia, Merriam-Websters, etc.
No, that's correct, pre-clinical is everything before actual clinical testing in humans.
However, pre-clinical has many phases, of which university research institutes only participate in the earlier ones.
Basic Research -> Lead -> Screen -> Hit -> Tox/ADME -> Formulation -> Phase I
I would argue that education research institutes only participate in the first four activities. It's very rare for them to work at all in the Tox/ADME and formulation phases, which are incredibly complex and require a lot of resources and expertise they don't have.
I would agree that universities do a large part of the basic science behind new drugs, but they do VERY little pre-clinical work (pretty much anything beyond simple receptor/enzyme bind studies).
Pre-clinical work is done by CROs and biotech/pharma. The resources required to do pre-clinical work is enormous. Membrane barrier penetration, microsomal metabolism of drug product require a very large investment and there aren't any universities I know of that have large enough R&D programs to support it.