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The Quest for the Cure: The Science and Stories Behind the Next Generation of Medicines
After more than fifty years of blockbuster drug development, skeptics are beginning to fear we are reaching the end of drug discovery to combat major diseases. In this engaging book, Brent R. Stockwell, a leading researcher in the exciting new science of chemical biology, describes this dilemma and the powerful techniques that may bring drug research into the twenty-first century.
Filled with absorbing stories of breakthroughs, this book begins with the scientific achievements of the twentieth century that led to today's drug innovations. We learn how the invention of mustard gas in World War I led to early anti-cancer agents and how the efforts to decode the human genome might lead to new approaches in drug design. Stockwell then turns to the seemingly incurable diseases we face today, such as Alzheimer's, many cancers, and others with no truly effective medicines, and details the cellular and molecular barriers thwarting scientists equipped with only the tools of traditional pharmaceutical research.
Scientists such as Stockwell are now developing methods to combat these complexities—technologies for constructing and testing millions of drug candidates, sophisticated computational modeling, and entirely new classes of drug molecules—all with an eye toward solving the most profound mysteries of living systems and finding cures for intractable diseases. If successful, these methods will unlock a vast terrain of untapped drug targets that could lead to a bounty of breakthrough medicines. Offering a rare, behind-the-scenes look at this cutting-edge research, The Quest for the Cure tells a thrilling story of science, persistence, and the quest to develop a new generation of cures.
Filled with absorbing stories of breakthroughs, this book begins with the scientific achievements of the twentieth century that led to today's drug innovations. We learn how the invention of mustard gas in World War I led to early anti-cancer agents and how the efforts to decode the human genome might lead to new approaches in drug design. Stockwell then turns to the seemingly incurable diseases we face today, such as Alzheimer's, many cancers, and others with no truly effective medicines, and details the cellular and molecular barriers thwarting scientists equipped with only the tools of traditional pharmaceutical research.
Scientists such as Stockwell are now developing methods to combat these complexities—technologies for constructing and testing millions of drug candidates, sophisticated computational modeling, and entirely new classes of drug molecules—all with an eye toward solving the most profound mysteries of living systems and finding cures for intractable diseases. If successful, these methods will unlock a vast terrain of untapped drug targets that could lead to a bounty of breakthrough medicines. Offering a rare, behind-the-scenes look at this cutting-edge research, The Quest for the Cure tells a thrilling story of science, persistence, and the quest to develop a new generation of cures.
284 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2011
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126 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
May 29, 2011
Introducing the reader to the fascinating and important topic of the future of drug development, Brent R. Stockwell explores how scientists are trying to find new treatments for seemingly uncurable diseases and the need for innovative new approaches in his book The Quest For The Cure.
With an in depth look at both the medical angle, as well as the crucial role of the pharmaceutical industry, this is, for the most parts, a comprehensibly written book on the matter. Aimed at a general audience the narrative of the book is unfortunately varying strongly between easily to comprehend chapters and chapters in which I admittedly had troubles when it came to understand all the chemical and biological details the author provided. You could say, a little medical background knowledge certainly won't hurt when reading the book.
From the scientific achievements of the twentieth century, to the proteins involved in the search for medicines, straight to new approaches in drug design and promising emerging techniques of drug discovery, Stockwell gives the reader a wide overview on the topic. The author also shares his entrepreneurial experience with insights on the potential of studying combinations of approved drugs, giving the book an autobiographic touch. Personally I would have wished for less scientific details and a closer look at the industry as such. Nonetheless an interesting read in which I learned quite a few new things!
In short: An engaging book on the future of drug discovery!
With an in depth look at both the medical angle, as well as the crucial role of the pharmaceutical industry, this is, for the most parts, a comprehensibly written book on the matter. Aimed at a general audience the narrative of the book is unfortunately varying strongly between easily to comprehend chapters and chapters in which I admittedly had troubles when it came to understand all the chemical and biological details the author provided. You could say, a little medical background knowledge certainly won't hurt when reading the book.
From the scientific achievements of the twentieth century, to the proteins involved in the search for medicines, straight to new approaches in drug design and promising emerging techniques of drug discovery, Stockwell gives the reader a wide overview on the topic. The author also shares his entrepreneurial experience with insights on the potential of studying combinations of approved drugs, giving the book an autobiographic touch. Personally I would have wished for less scientific details and a closer look at the industry as such. Nonetheless an interesting read in which I learned quite a few new things!
In short: An engaging book on the future of drug discovery!
May 31, 2018
Throughout this book, written by Brent R. Stockwell, it explains how many scientists are quickly realizing breakthroughs of new drugs and cures are coming to an end. For the past 50 years countless drugs have been created and saved lives of many but as the years keep coming, finding new cures are becoming harder than ever. Researcher and scientist Brent R. Stockwell, along with several others, show in this book how this problem will continue to grow in the future and how some techniques could fix the problem.
Towards the beginning of the book we get to understand how lots of already effective drugs and medicines were created and who created them. For example, in 1948 a group of 16 children with acute leukemia were each given an anti-folate called aminopterin. 10 of the 16 children increasingly improved after receiving the aminopterin. Soon after this test the children were given methopterin, an even stronger anti-cancer anti-folate that included fewer side effects. This treatment, now called methotrexate, worked so well that it is now the most widely used drug to cure acute leukemia. Methotrexate is also commonly used to treat other diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and psoriasis. This was all developed by Sidney Farber. Unfortunately at the time this drug was created, there wasn’t a cure for acute leukemia yet. Most of the children treated were still expected to pass away instead of live on. There are many other incredible stories of amazing people creating life saving drugs and medicines in this book too. A portion of the book was dedicated to research the author and other scientists have found on how to find more cures and drugs for current incurable diseases. Stockwell also explains why some diseases are incurable right now and why scientists can’t find a solution. There are many different proteins in our bodies, and some just can’t be drugged. This is a problem because there isn’t another way to treat the disease. All together, The Quest for the Cure is a very good book to read to understand the past, present, and future of medicine and treating some diseases.
This book could interest a lot of people, especially ones looking to learn more about medicines. If someone wants to understand how some medicines work inside the body or how they are tested, this book is also a good place to find that kind of information. This book would also interest someone who would like to learn about human diseases. This book explains everything very well and is a good starting place to begin learning about these topics.
Towards the beginning of the book we get to understand how lots of already effective drugs and medicines were created and who created them. For example, in 1948 a group of 16 children with acute leukemia were each given an anti-folate called aminopterin. 10 of the 16 children increasingly improved after receiving the aminopterin. Soon after this test the children were given methopterin, an even stronger anti-cancer anti-folate that included fewer side effects. This treatment, now called methotrexate, worked so well that it is now the most widely used drug to cure acute leukemia. Methotrexate is also commonly used to treat other diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and psoriasis. This was all developed by Sidney Farber. Unfortunately at the time this drug was created, there wasn’t a cure for acute leukemia yet. Most of the children treated were still expected to pass away instead of live on. There are many other incredible stories of amazing people creating life saving drugs and medicines in this book too. A portion of the book was dedicated to research the author and other scientists have found on how to find more cures and drugs for current incurable diseases. Stockwell also explains why some diseases are incurable right now and why scientists can’t find a solution. There are many different proteins in our bodies, and some just can’t be drugged. This is a problem because there isn’t another way to treat the disease. All together, The Quest for the Cure is a very good book to read to understand the past, present, and future of medicine and treating some diseases.
This book could interest a lot of people, especially ones looking to learn more about medicines. If someone wants to understand how some medicines work inside the body or how they are tested, this book is also a good place to find that kind of information. This book would also interest someone who would like to learn about human diseases. This book explains everything very well and is a good starting place to begin learning about these topics.
January 1, 2025
I borrowed this book from my sister who has a degree in chemistry. I should’ve assumed it was gonna be a lot of small molecule related information. The title intrigued me as a Health Coach and personal trainer and Health advocate for video gamers because I am really on the quest to help (not cure) the video game industry. I picked it up honestly because I am intrigued by human science. I figured this would be fitting. If I would’ve known it was more chemistry based then I probably wouldn’t have picked it up. But the little information that I could wrap my head around was excellent! Highly recommend if you want to learn more about the body!
July 7, 2011
The Quest for the Cure: The Science and Stories Behind the Next Generation of Medicines, Columbia University Press, ISBN 9780231152129, June 2011
The great advances in medicine over the last century have been to a large degree advances in the creation of new and more effective drugs to combat diseases that were previously untreatable. Stockwell tells the story of these advances, how they were achieved, and why--a fact not widely recognized by the general public--the rate of new drug discovery has slowed dramatically, raising the spectre in the medical and pharmaceutical industries of an end to new drugs
We are first introduced to the basics of how disease and drugs work. Disease, at its simplest level, is caused by proteins in our bodies malfunctioning--whether due to the effects of infection with bacteria or viruses, or due to the mutation of a gene, in the protein itself or in a kinase that attaches to the protein. A drug is a small molecule (usually) that attaches itself to a small open spot in a protein molecule, preventing that protein from engaging in the malfunctioning behavior that creates illness. Stockwell gives us a fascinating introduction to the early waves of drug discovery, the testing and screening of small molecules that will attach to proteins and affect their functioning, for better or for worse. Interestingly, the invention of the dreaded mustard gas of the two world wars was a side product of early drug discovery research--and there are in fact legitimate and beneficial uses for some of the "mustards" produced by that research!
The drug discovery history is compelling in itself, but it leads to a more discouraging reality: Not all proteins are "druggable." Their structures don't provide suitable spots for small molecule drugs to attach themselves, or their functioning is such that "breaking" the function of the protein by a small molecule drug leads to the very disease process you want to prevent. Consider a protein that in its "on" position causes cell growth, and in its "off" position stops it--and the "broken" position for this protein, if you attach a small molecule drug to it, is the "on" position. Other proteins are involved in protein-protein reactions rather than protein-kinase reactions, and the two proteins, both being relatively large molecules, attach and interact over much larger areas than in protein-kinase reactions.
Why is this a problem? Because small molecules are better drugs in a number of ways. They are more stable than most large molecules, so they are easier to work with. They are easier to make. And they can almost always be administered orally. Large molecules are sufficiently hard to work with that they have long been considered unsuitable as drug candidates.
Taken all together, the proteins with lack of suitable attachment sites, the disease mechanism being such that attaching a small molecule won't help, the protein being involved in a protein-protein reaction rather than a protein-kinase reaction, only 15% of proteins are considered "druggable," and only 2% of proteins have actually been successfully targeted with drugs. The rate of drug discovery is slowing down, and unless there is a major change, pharmaceutical companies and academic researchers see drug discovery slowing even further, or even coming to an end within the next couple of decades. If that happens, many human diseases will remain untreatable. It's a grim realization.
But the last part of the book is about potential solutions to this problem. It's about building artificial peptides and even artificial proteins, and making the stable with carbon stapling. It's about learning to image the structures of proteins, to find potential drug attachment sites in proteins currently considered "undruggable." It's about creating libraries of not just small molecules but large molecules that can be tested. It's about some really exciting developments that, if pursued and funded, can potentially completely change the current prospects for drug discovery. It holds out the prospect of personalized medicine--learning how to identify which patients will respond to a particular treatment, so that only those who can get the benefit need to endure the side effects.
I'm not doing justice to how exciting this is; you need to read Stockwell's book to get the full benefit of that! This is a book fairly heavy on science, but explained in clear, readable language that should be accessible to any layperson who is interested in the subject, and for those who want to dig more deeply into the science, there are extensive notes and references at the end. And for those readers who do expect to dig into the science, I would recommend getting the print edition, not the electronic edition, because the figures and charts included in the text will be, as is common, more readable in the print edition than the electronic edition.
Highly recommended.
I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
The great advances in medicine over the last century have been to a large degree advances in the creation of new and more effective drugs to combat diseases that were previously untreatable. Stockwell tells the story of these advances, how they were achieved, and why--a fact not widely recognized by the general public--the rate of new drug discovery has slowed dramatically, raising the spectre in the medical and pharmaceutical industries of an end to new drugs
We are first introduced to the basics of how disease and drugs work. Disease, at its simplest level, is caused by proteins in our bodies malfunctioning--whether due to the effects of infection with bacteria or viruses, or due to the mutation of a gene, in the protein itself or in a kinase that attaches to the protein. A drug is a small molecule (usually) that attaches itself to a small open spot in a protein molecule, preventing that protein from engaging in the malfunctioning behavior that creates illness. Stockwell gives us a fascinating introduction to the early waves of drug discovery, the testing and screening of small molecules that will attach to proteins and affect their functioning, for better or for worse. Interestingly, the invention of the dreaded mustard gas of the two world wars was a side product of early drug discovery research--and there are in fact legitimate and beneficial uses for some of the "mustards" produced by that research!
The drug discovery history is compelling in itself, but it leads to a more discouraging reality: Not all proteins are "druggable." Their structures don't provide suitable spots for small molecule drugs to attach themselves, or their functioning is such that "breaking" the function of the protein by a small molecule drug leads to the very disease process you want to prevent. Consider a protein that in its "on" position causes cell growth, and in its "off" position stops it--and the "broken" position for this protein, if you attach a small molecule drug to it, is the "on" position. Other proteins are involved in protein-protein reactions rather than protein-kinase reactions, and the two proteins, both being relatively large molecules, attach and interact over much larger areas than in protein-kinase reactions.
Why is this a problem? Because small molecules are better drugs in a number of ways. They are more stable than most large molecules, so they are easier to work with. They are easier to make. And they can almost always be administered orally. Large molecules are sufficiently hard to work with that they have long been considered unsuitable as drug candidates.
Taken all together, the proteins with lack of suitable attachment sites, the disease mechanism being such that attaching a small molecule won't help, the protein being involved in a protein-protein reaction rather than a protein-kinase reaction, only 15% of proteins are considered "druggable," and only 2% of proteins have actually been successfully targeted with drugs. The rate of drug discovery is slowing down, and unless there is a major change, pharmaceutical companies and academic researchers see drug discovery slowing even further, or even coming to an end within the next couple of decades. If that happens, many human diseases will remain untreatable. It's a grim realization.
But the last part of the book is about potential solutions to this problem. It's about building artificial peptides and even artificial proteins, and making the stable with carbon stapling. It's about learning to image the structures of proteins, to find potential drug attachment sites in proteins currently considered "undruggable." It's about creating libraries of not just small molecules but large molecules that can be tested. It's about some really exciting developments that, if pursued and funded, can potentially completely change the current prospects for drug discovery. It holds out the prospect of personalized medicine--learning how to identify which patients will respond to a particular treatment, so that only those who can get the benefit need to endure the side effects.
I'm not doing justice to how exciting this is; you need to read Stockwell's book to get the full benefit of that! This is a book fairly heavy on science, but explained in clear, readable language that should be accessible to any layperson who is interested in the subject, and for those who want to dig more deeply into the science, there are extensive notes and references at the end. And for those readers who do expect to dig into the science, I would recommend getting the print edition, not the electronic edition, because the figures and charts included in the text will be, as is common, more readable in the print edition than the electronic edition.
Highly recommended.
I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
December 9, 2014
Brent R. Stockwell takes the reader through on a journey through the history and future of drug development in his book The Quest for the Cure: The Science and Stories Behind the Next Generation of Medicines.
It is written in a very accessible style and so is open to both those with a scientific background and those who do not. Although a basic grasp of biology will ease things along. As well as dealing with the science of drug development Stockwell also deals with the business side of the pharmaceutical industry, a combination lacking in similar books. I was particularly interested in his exploration of the role of ���undruggable��� proteins in diseases such as cancer, and how these pose an issue for drug developers. Professor Stockwell���s expertise in this area clearly shows and I especially liked the many anecdotes from his own work that were included.
Overall this is a very interesting and up to date book, which although aimed at those with an academic/professional interest in the topic, is accessible to a much wider audience. It was of particular interest to me as I trained in a field closely related to drug development.
It is written in a very accessible style and so is open to both those with a scientific background and those who do not. Although a basic grasp of biology will ease things along. As well as dealing with the science of drug development Stockwell also deals with the business side of the pharmaceutical industry, a combination lacking in similar books. I was particularly interested in his exploration of the role of ���undruggable��� proteins in diseases such as cancer, and how these pose an issue for drug developers. Professor Stockwell���s expertise in this area clearly shows and I especially liked the many anecdotes from his own work that were included.
Overall this is a very interesting and up to date book, which although aimed at those with an academic/professional interest in the topic, is accessible to a much wider audience. It was of particular interest to me as I trained in a field closely related to drug development.
August 11, 2012
This book doesn't suffer the pitfalls of many popular science books of getting the science incorrect or misleading the reader. It gets the science perfectly right and mostly does a good job explaining the topics in language comprehensible by the lay reader. The problem is that the writing is horrible. It is poorly structured throughout. Paragraphs often seem inserted with no connection to the topics around them as if there was something meant to be flushed out, but never returned to. The CombinatoRx chapter seems like just a place for the author to semi-brag about starting a pharmaceutical company while evading the blame for its eventual failure despite raising hundreds of millions of dollars; having no connection to the chapters before or after.
Solid Science
Great Topic
Poorly structured, seemingly little to no editing with certain places showing they probably were commented on by an editor, and the author stuck in a paragraph to appease the editor with little concern for how it fit into where it was put in.
Solid Science
Great Topic
Poorly structured, seemingly little to no editing with certain places showing they probably were commented on by an editor, and the author stuck in a paragraph to appease the editor with little concern for how it fit into where it was put in.
January 12, 2015
This book represents a great idea by Dr. Stockwell - to expose to the public eye the history and directions of pharmaceutical research. It reads as a relaxed version of a thesis introduction, with some personal experiences and a broad spectrum of relevant, seminal papers cited. I found myself wondering if the public would be interested. I found the books "The billion dollar molecule," "genentech" and "The emporer of all maladies" much more compelling, with some narrative thrust leading the reader forward, whereas this book for me, at least, didn't present the latest and greatest view of our quest for the cure.
August 18, 2014
"The Quest for the Cure" is a rather complete overview of the history of drug development. It focuses on how and why some proteins seem to be undruggable, that is, impossible to create a drug against. In order to do so, it explains in a clear and accessible way the way small molecules, proteins and peptides are discovered or synthesized, how they work and react together. Describing the birth of drugs and telling anecdotes about the greatest researchers of the field, it takes us on a journey in the world of biochemistry and synthesis chemistry that makes clearer what is at stake.
April 12, 2012
The book is focusing on one problem: how to design drugs for "undruggable" proteins. So if you want to learn something bigger about "next generation of medicines", you will be a bit disappointed. On the other hand, the book does explain the topic very well.
October 15, 2011
Fair. Interesting subject matter, but not very engaging prose. I'm looking for a better treatment of the material.
November 2, 2011
The combination of a fascinating and accessible style with technical depth is remarkable.
Want to read
March 22, 2012As seen in
Nature Chemistry
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews