Given the recent report that new drugs are now estimated to cost $1.7 billion to develop, there is a constant drive among pharmaceutical companies and biotechs to become more productive. In fact, many biotech companies were founded on that premise. Remember the dreams of all those genomics-based companies in recent years? Well, Telik (Nasdaq: TELK - News) is one of those companies that promised better research productivity. It was founded on a technology called “TRAP,” which pre-screens compounds that are likely drug targets. This allows the researchers to pick out chemical scaffolds that will interact with the right target for their disease of choice. Instead of screening 2 million compounds, Telik’s researchers have found drug candidates from screening just 200. At first, as a private company, Telik tried to license its discovery technology to Big Pharma, but there weren’t enough takers.
