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Nature's drug database - The Works in Progress Newsletter

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This article originally appeared in the first print issue of Works in Progress, which subscribers received last week. Subscribe to get six full-color editions sent bimonthly, plus invitations to our subscriber-only events. Clinical trials for new drugs are expensive and uncertain. More than nine out of every ten drugs that enter human trials fail because of harmful side effects or a lack of efficacy. Safety and effectiveness in animals often fail to translate to humans. Imperfect as animal trials are, though, we need to know what happens when we block or boost certain biological pathways with drugs. But there is another source of this data that we are beginning to draw on. Nature has already done lots of the trials we want to run, through random genetic mutations and natural selection. Since the first full mapping of the human genome in 2003, and the rise of technologies to sequence human DNA, we now can study the genetic mutations in nature that do the same thing as the drugs we want

Features Nature's drug database Millions of years of evolution have given us genomes that are like giant datasets for drug development. Finally, we are learning how to use them. Works in Progress Dec 03, 2025 60 1 7 Share This article originally appeared in the first print issue of Works in Progress, which subscribers received last week. Subscribe to get six full-color editions sent bimonthly, plus invitations to our subscriber-only events. Clinical trials for new drugs are expensive and uncertain. More than nine out of every ten drugs that enter human trials fail because of harmful side effec

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