Drug Discovery Today

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Overview
Drug Discovery Today (ISSN 1359-6446) is a monthly review journal that is published by Elsevier and was launched in 1996. The journal publishes 24 issues per year as 12 monthly double issues, and covers the whole of the preclinical drug discovery process from target identification and validation through hit identification, lead identification and optimisation to candidate selection. The journal serves as a source of information for drug researchers, both in industry and academia.

Each issue of the journal contains a short front section and review articles. The front section contains an Editorial (opinion articles intended to engender debate around a topic) and a Perspective article, which might be an Interview with a leading figure in drug discovery or a Biotech Focus that highlights the biotechnology activities in a particular geographic location. Occasionally, Business Trends articles are included, in which experts review trends in the approaches to treat disease classes. In the review section, Keynote Reviews and Foundation Reviews provide broad, authoritative coverage of a particular topic.

The Short Reviews deal with focused topics and are categorised as: Gene To Screen, which deals with the earliest part of drug discovery and all aspects involved in target identification, validation and assay development; Informatics, which deals with all aspects of computational biology and chemistry related to drug discovery; and Post Screen, which covers the science from hit identification to candidate selection, clinical trial design and patent issues. The short Monitor section highlights recent developments in medicinal chemistry, and the Diary section points readers to the most appropriate future conferences in drug discovery.

Topics covered include:
 * Genomics and proteomics
 * Target identification and validation
 * Assay development
 * Library design
 * Computational chemistry and biology
 * Medicinal chemistry
 * Novel therapeutic strategies
 * Drug delivery
 * Formulation
 * Biotherapeutics
 * ADME–Tox
 * Business strategy
 * Clinical trials

In 2004, the Drug Discovery Today journal series expanded with the launch of four online-only review journals: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Mechanisms, Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models, Drug Discovery Today: Therapeutic Strategies and Drug Discovery Today: Technologies. The four journals systematically cover the essential developments across the breadth of therapeutic areas and technologies relevant to the drug discovery and development pipeline.