Comment by diomedes
5 hours ago
yes. you have to recruit a diverse and representative population, which is very difficult and time-consuming. then, you have to spend several years conducting the trial. most of the time, the drug either has no effect or is actively harmful. 90% of drugs that go to clinical trials fail!
Is simulating the effects on humans not an option? Or is it that simulation technologies are not good (accurate) enough?
Thank you for entertaining my curiosity! I have been meaning to educate myself on this but don't know anybody in my circle who is knowledgeable in this field.
Humans are incredibly complex systems (and systems of systems) and our knowledge of how these systems work and interact is very limited despite the amount of work put into improving our understanding of them.
We can try to simulate the interaction between a drug and a protein, but most of the time the data to say what the downstream effects (if any) are simply does not exist. This is further complicated by the fact that these downstream effects can be extremely varied depending on both the tissue/disease you are targeting and the person you are treating.
Of course we are always generating more data from more diverse populations and more conditions, but there is a very very long way to being able to simulate drug trials like this.