Biotechnology and drug discovery: from bench to bedside

New biotechnology and drug discovery technologies are facilitating the rapid expansion of the clinical drug chest, empowering clinicians with a better understanding of disease as well as novel modalities for treating patients. Important research tools and themes include genomics, proteomics, ligand-receptor interaction, signal transduction, rational drug design, biochips, and microarrays. Emerging drug classes include monoclonal antibodies, cancer vaccines, gene therapy, antisense strands, enzymes, and proteins. In this article, we review these topics and illustrate their potential impact by presenting an overview of promising drugs in the pipeline. Clinicians who use these novel treatments must become familiar with these trends.