Sustainable Drug Discovery Can Advance Global Health

Medicinal chemistry can do more than identify promising drug candidates. It can help address neglected diseases, reduce inequalities, improve access to treatment, and limit the environmental impact of pharmaceutical research.

Pharma needs to understand how scientific progress matters most when its benefits reach beyond the laboratory.

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Why Does Sustainable Drug Discovery Matter?

Drug discovery has traditionally focused on finding molecules that work, improving their activity, and establishing whether they can become safe and effective medicines.

These remain essential objectives. However, the wider consequences of pharmaceutical research deserve greater attention.

Medicines depend on complex supply chains, energy-intensive processes, specialist infrastructure, and access to scientific expertise.

Their production and use can also affect the environment. At the same time, many communities still lack treatments for diseases that impose a substantial health and economic burden.

In an important 2025 perspective, Martinengo and colleagues examine how medicinal chemistry can contribute to all of the 17 United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

To this end, there are specific areas where medicinal chemistry itself can make a direct contribution, while recognising that other goals provide important foundations for responsible research.

Importantly, pharma has to move the sustainability discussion upstream.

Drug discovery decisions can influence public health, economic opportunity, and environmental outcomes long before a medicine reaches the market.

Neglected Diseases Need Better Drug Discovery Strategies

The connection between disease and poverty remains a major global health challenge.

Neglected tropical diseases and other infections disproportionately affect disadvantaged populations.

Such illness can reduce productivity, limit education, and deepen economic hardship.

Medicinal chemistry can help break this cycle by producing treatments that are effective, affordable, and practical to administer.

For example, there is praziquantel, a medicine used to treat schistosomiasis. The drug contains two mirror-image forms, known as enantiomers. The R-form provides the main therapeutic activity, while the S-form contributes less benefit and can cause unwanted effects.

Researchers have therefore pursued a formulation based on the more active R-enantiomer. Arpraziquantel, developed as a child-friendly treatment, has progressed through Phase I and Phase II clinical trials.

This drug development illustrates how understanding a molecule’s structure can improve treatment suitability for a population that has historically faced limited options.

There is also acoziborole, an investigational treatment for human African trypanosomiasis, commonly known as sleeping sickness.

For acoziborole, medicinal chemistry helped researchers improve the compound’s properties, including its ability to cross the blood–brain barrier. This is important because the disease can reach the central nervous system, where treatment becomes more difficult.

Just these two examples among so many show why drug discovery strategies must account for the needs of the people most affected by a disease.

A promising molecule has limited public health value if its formulation, administration, or cost makes it inaccessible.

The work of organisations such as the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative demonstrates the importance of partnerships that connect scientific research with unmet medical needs.

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New Drug Modalities Can Address Difficult Disease Targets

Sustainable drug discovery does not mean slowing scientific innovation, but it does mean directing innovation towards meaningful health needs while considering its wider impact.

Positive advances are particularly true for drug discovery for cancer treatments, particularly the development of targeted therapies.

Medicinal chemists have helped move many standard cancer treatments beyond conventional chemotherapy by designing molecules that interfere with specific proteins involved in cancer growth.

Kinase inhibitors provide a prominent example. Their development has relied on detailed knowledge of protein structures and the design of molecules that bind to particular regions. Researchers have also explored allosteric inhibitors, covalent inhibitors, and macrocyclic compounds to improve selectivity and address resistance.

However, targeted therapies still face challenges.

Mutations can change drug-binding sites, while toxicity and disease progression can limit treatment. This has encouraged researchers to investigate alternative approaches.

One such approach is proteolysis-targeting chimeras (PROTACs). These molecules recruit cellular protein-degradation machinery to remove selected proteins rather than simply blocking their activity.

One such successful PROTAC is ARV-471, an oestrogen receptor degrader developed by Arvinas and Pfizer, for breast cancer treatment.

There is also the potential of PROTACs in neurodegenerative disease research, including investigational work targeting LRRK2, a protein associated with Parkinson’s disease.

These technologies are not guaranteed solutions. Their clinical value depends on further evidence around safety, efficacy, delivery, and patient benefit.

Nevertheless, they demonstrate how medicinal chemistry continues to expand the range of biological targets that researchers can address.

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Green Chemistry Can Reduce the Cost of Pharma’s Environmental Impact

The environmental footprint of a medicine is shaped by more than its manufacturing site.

Decisions made during molecular design and synthesis can influence the resources required to produce it, the waste generated, and how the compound behaves after use.

Sustainable drug discovery can be connected to several practical approaches:

• Greener synthesis: Reducing hazardous reagents, unnecessary reaction steps, energy use, and waste.
• Renewable feedstocks: Exploring biological and agricultural materials as sources of useful chemical building blocks.
• Flow chemistry: Improving reaction control and efficiency while supporting more consistent production.
• Environmental risk assessment: Considering persistence, degradation, and potential effects on non-target organisms during early research.

Recent examples actioned by sponsors such as Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Merck all include greener synthetic routes, tools for assessing chemical processes, and approaches that reduce the resource demands of synthesis.

Flow chemistry is particularly relevant.

It allows chemical reactions to take place continuously through controlled systems rather than relying only on traditional batch processes. This has been used in the synthesis of ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic included on the World Health Organization’s Essential Medicines List.

These developments suggest that sustainability can become part of the technical design process rather than a separate corporate responsibility exercise.

The American Chemical Society’s green chemistry resources provide further context for applying these principles.

Waste Could Become a Resource for Drug Discovery

One of the more interesting examples in sustainable drug development is the use of cashew nutshell liquid (CNSL), a by-product of the cashew industry.

CNSL contains naturally occurring phenolic compounds, including cardanol and anacardic acid. These substances have biological properties that make them interesting starting points for medicinal chemistry.

There is ongoing research into CNSL-derived compounds with potential applications in areas such as antiparasitic drug discovery.

The compounds illustrate how agricultural waste could provide useful starting materials for new chemical entities.

This approach could create opportunities in regions where cashew production is already established, including parts of Africa and Asia.

Local research and manufacturing capacity could support employment, reduce dependence on imported materials, and connect regional resources with pharmaceutical innovation.

The commercial opportunity remains dependent on technical feasibility, scalable production, safety, and economic viability.

Still, turning waste into useful chemical starting materials offers a practical link between circular production and drug discovery.

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Sustainable Drug Discovery Must Include People and Their Planet

Pharma development must also consider education, gender equality, scientific infrastructure, and biodiversity.

Access to medicinal chemistry tertiary education remains limited in developing nations.

Universities, professional organisations, and international programmes can help widen participation by providing training, research opportunities, and access to specialist tools.

Digital learning initiatives can also connect scientists who may not have access to well-resourced laboratories or institutions.

Gender representation is another issue.

There is an historical under-representation of women in medicinal chemistry and a connected need to improve visibility, career development, and leadership opportunities.

Gaps persist in women’s health research, where unmet medical needs continue to create opportunities for further discovery.

Further, environmental responsibility extends to the life of a medicine after treatment.

Pharmaceutical residues can enter water systems and ecosystems, where some compounds persist in water and affect wildlife.

Therefore, there is the strong argument that medicinal chemists should consider environmental behaviour during early design.

This includes exploring compounds that retain their therapeutic function but break down into less harmful products after use.

The concept of designing medicines with their eventual environmental fate in mind could help reduce the long-term impact of pharmaceutical pollution.

A One Health approach strengthens this argument. Human health, animal health, and environmental health are connected. Drug discovery should therefore consider more than the intended biological target.

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Science Diplomacy Can Help Turn Research Into Shared Progress

World Science Day for Peace and Development takes place on 10 November. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO’s)2026 theme, “Common ground through science diplomacy,” highlights the role of scientific cooperation in addressing shared challenges.

Medicinal chemistry provides a strong example of why that cooperation matters.

Drug discovery brings together chemists, biologists, pharmacologists, clinicians, engineers, manufacturers, regulators, and public health specialists.

No single institution or country has all the expertise, infrastructure, and resources required to address every global health challenge.

Such international scientific collaboration and diplomacy is a core foundation for progress towards SDGs.

The Malta Conferences allows scientists from regions affected by political tensions to meet and discuss shared scientific challenges.

Such initiatives show how scientific exchange can create dialogue even when wider diplomatic relationships are difficult.

For pharma, this has practical implications. Partnerships with universities, public health organisations, local research groups, and disease-focused initiatives can help align research priorities with regional needs.

They can also strengthen scientific capacity in countries that have historically had a limited role in global drug discovery.

This is not simply a matter of corporate philanthropy. Inclusive research partnerships can improve the relevance of discovery programmes, broaden scientific expertise, and support more sustainable access to innovation.

Drug Discovery Needs a Broader Definition of Progress

There is a very compelling case for treating sustainability as part of medicinal chemistry’s core responsibilities, as molecular design can influence treatment effectiveness, accessibility, manufacturing efficiency, and environmental impact.

However, much of the developed or developing approaches remain in the early-stages and require further technical and clinical evidence.

Even so, its central challenge is relevant to all of pharma. A discovery programme should not be judged only by whether it produces a promising candidate, but how it affects the disease burden it addresses, the populations it serves, the resources it consumes, and the consequences of its use.

World Science Day offers a timely reminder that scientific progress is a shared responsibility. For medicinal chemistry, the next generation of innovation must combine molecular precision with public health priorities, environmental awareness, and international cooperation.

At Pharmatica we critically examine the science, partnerships, and strategic decisions shaping the future of life sciences, from early-stage drug discovery to the global impact of pharmaceutical innovation.

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