Joanna Owens, PhD
Joanna brings more than 20 years’ experience writing about a wide range of scientific topics in biosciences, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. After a PhD in Molecular Toxicology, Joanna began a career in science publishing, as associate editor on Drug Discovery Today and later as senior editor, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. In 2007, she joined one of the world’s largest biomedical charities, Cancer Research UK, specializing in plain language science communications for patients and the public. Joanna has been a freelance writer since 2017, covering all biomedical topics with a focus on oncology, pharmacology and drug discovery.
Latest Content
Article
Phenotypic Screening – Advances in Technologies and Techniques
Phenotypic screening is gaining new momentum in drug discovery with the hope that this approach will improve the success rate of drug approval. In this article we look at some of the latest screening tools and their applications.
Listicle
The Immune System and Cancer
There has been an acceleration in our understanding of how cancer evades the immune system, and an explosion in new therapeutics that re-configure the immune system to mount a powerful anticancer response. Download this list to learn more.
Article
Optimizing Kinetics in Drug Discovery
As biology presents ever-more challenging targets, the chemistry world is pushing ahead with new tools to design or discover drugs that have optimal kinetics. We look at two different approaches being used to explore and optimize the kinetics of tomorrow’s medicines.
Article
The Evolving Field of Cancer Biomarkers
Given the complexity of cancer, it’s arguably unlikely that single molecules will work as clinically meaningful biomarkers for cancer. Today, biomarker discovery involves detecting patterns – characteristics or phenotypes that can be measured and monitored throughout a patient’s journey. Here, we look at two approaches being explored in this evolving field.
Article
Post-translational Modifications in Biopharmaceuticals
This article provides insights on the impact of post-translational modifications of biopharmaceutical products on drug development and biotherapeutic formulation.
Article
Cell Metabolism and Cancer
It’s almost 100 years since Otto Warburg’s observation that cancer cells metabolize glucose in a manner that is distinct from that of cells in normal tissues. Yet, we still don’t fully understand why. In the years since, significant effort and resource has focused on understanding cancer-specific metabolic changes. Today, attention is also turning to the metabolic interaction between a tumor and its host.
Article
Big Data Analysis Approaches for Drug Discovery
Big data has long been a buzzword in drug discovery, but as analysis methods become more sophisticated, its potential is beginning to be realized. We look at some of the latest advances in big data analysis for drug discovery.
Article
Emerging Classes of Next-generation Biotherapeutics
We are entering uncharted territory in biopharmaceutical development. Emerging new classes of treatments are harnessing the natural power of viruses and cells and engineering them to fight human diseases. As our arsenal of conventional therapies begins to fail, a new army of biotherapeutics is on the horizon. Here, we look at two new classes of treatments leading the charge.
Article
Binding Kinetics in Drug Discovery
The study of binding kinetics goes back more than a century and is the foundation of pharmacological theory as we know it today. Yet, although the interactions between drug target, endogenous ligands and exogenous potential drugs are highly complex, the kinetics of most approved and clinically effective drugs are markedly similar.
Article
Current Trends in Bispecifics, Dual-action and Combination Therapies
It’s becoming increasingly apparent that treatments for complex diseases such as cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and depression are unlikely to target a single molecule in the pathological pathway. Drug developers are turning to new ways to exploit more than one drug target at a time.
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