Prous J R, Khurdayan V K
Drug News Perspect. 2007 Jan-Feb;20(1):7-15.
Human diseases are a significant cause of suffering and mortality and lead to a consequential need for effective therapies. The need for therapy is as old as human history itself. Therapy has progressed from an age of administration of herbal remedies and organ extracts to an era of serendipitous drug discovery, when the pharmaceutical industry was born, to the dominance of medicinal chemistry and more recently, to the revolutionary advances--genetic engineering and monoclonal antibody technology, high-speed technologies, gene therapy and the deciphering of the human genome--which promise the discovery of completely new targets for new medicines as well as the great potential of personalized therapy.
人类疾病是痛苦和死亡的重要原因，因此对有效治疗方法的需求也随之而来。对治疗方法的需求与人类历史本身一样古老。治疗方法已经从使用草药和器官提取物的时代发展到偶然发现药物的时代（制药行业诞生于此），再到药物化学占据主导地位，以及最近的革命性进展——基因工程和单克隆抗体技术、高速技术、基因治疗和人类基因组的破译——这些进展有望发现全新的新药靶点以及个性化治疗的巨大潜力。
