Over the past ten years, the FDA has approved around 500 new drugs. The backstories and impacts of a few of these are well known and celebrated, with a Nobel Prize for PD1 blockers and massive profits for fat-busting GLP-1 receptor agonists. But thousands of scientists toiled away on other long and winding journeys to unlock new medicines, to much less acclaim. In Breakthrough: The Quest for Life-Changing Medicines, William Pao shines a light on eight drug discovery adventures to highlight the unsung heroes of biopharmaceutical innovation, illustrating how novel drugs are discovered.
