Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Wiley Interdiscip Rev Syst Biol Med. 2013 Jul-Aug;5(4):461-80. doi: 10.1002/wsbm.1222. Epub 2013 Jun 4.
A crisis continues to brew within the pharmaceutical research and development (R&D) enterprise: productivity continues declining as costs rise, despite ongoing, often dramatic scientific and technical advances. To reverse this trend, we offer various suggestions for both the expansion and broader adoption of modeling and simulation (M&S) methods. We suggest strategies and scenarios intended to enable new M&S use cases that directly engage R&D knowledge generation and build actionable mechanistic insight, thereby opening the door to enhanced productivity. What M&S requirements must be satisfied to access and open the door, and begin reversing the productivity decline? Can current methods and tools fulfill the requirements, or are new methods necessary? We draw on the relevant, recent literature to provide and explore answers. In so doing, we identify essential, key roles for agent-based and other methods. We assemble a list of requirements necessary for M&S to meet the diverse needs distilled from a collection of research, review, and opinion articles. We argue that to realize its full potential, M&S should be actualized within a larger information technology framework--a dynamic knowledge repository--wherein models of various types execute, evolve, and increase in accuracy over time. We offer some details of the issues that must be addressed for such a repository to accrue the capabilities needed to reverse the productivity decline.
制药研发（R&D）企业内部持续酝酿着一场危机：尽管不断取得显著的科学和技术进步，但生产力仍持续下降，而成本却不断上升。为了扭转这一趋势，我们提出了各种建议，旨在扩大和更广泛地采用建模和模拟（M&S）方法。我们提出了各种策略和方案，旨在推动新的 M&S 应用案例，这些案例直接涉及 R&D 的知识生成，并构建可操作的机制洞察力，从而提高生产力。为了获得和开启这扇门，进而扭转生产力下降的趋势，M&S 需要满足哪些要求？当前的方法和工具是否能够满足这些要求，或者是否需要新的方法？我们借鉴了相关的最新文献，提供并探讨了答案。这样做的同时，我们确定了基于代理和其他方法的基本关键作用。我们还列出了 M&S 满足从一系列研究、综述和观点文章中提炼出来的各种需求所必需的要求。我们认为，要充分发挥 M&S 的潜力，就应该将其实际应用于更广泛的信息技术框架——一个动态的知识库——其中各种类型的模型可以随着时间的推移执行、演变和提高准确性。我们还提供了一些关于实现这种知识库所需的细节，以积累扭转生产力下降所需的能力。
