| • 1. Resources. Resources are critical, and all programs must have access to major molecular resources for screening for drug discovery.
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| • 2. Access to a rapid drug development program, with clinical tests which are tightly related to the animal tests. Thus, feedback to discovery scientists can be rapid to optimize discovery and to ensure that researchers do not continue to work on hypotheses which do not stand up in the clinic.
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| • 3. Approaches and strategies. This is a critical issue for success, and requires medicalized research, in association with the specialized resources. Reverse engineering animal models from our knowledge of brain systems in disease states will better reflet pathophysilogical situations and allow selection of new drugs.
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| • 4. Quality/creativity. The quality, application, and creativity of the scientists involved, together with the relevance of the approaches and strategies, are key factors for success. However, there arc few measures, other than past records, which can be quantified by objective criteria (other than publications, but these are not always related to drug discovery capacity).
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| • 5. Outside research. Having access to a large network of academic contacts is crucial to icreasing the number of ideas processed and increasing throughput.
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