Figure 4

Drug discovery starts after a target has been identified and ends with the initiation of clinical phase I, the later which is part of the drug development activities. a. In the traditional Figure, the lead optimization process is focused on optimizing the functional activity of the compounds, after which the early preclinical phase commences. b. Today, lead optimization usually focuses not only on optimizing functional activity but also on the early ADMET properties. The lead optimization and early preclinical steps are therefore fused into one step. c. During the course of the discovery pipeline, data is generated describing the ability of the synthesized compounds to function as drugs. The data is utilized for the identification of new compounds for synthesis that are more likely than the previously made to excerpt the prerequisites to be acceptable for clinical drug usage.