Innovation: Rescuing drug discovery: in vivo systems pathology and systems pharmacology.

The pharmaceutical industry is currently beleaguered by close scrutiny from the financial community, regulators and the general public. Productivity, in terms of new drug approvals, has generally been falling for almost a decade and the safety of a number of highly successful drugs has recently been brought into question. Here, we discuss whether taking an in vivo systems approach to drug discovery and development could be the paradigm shift that rescues the industry.