Navigating the Future of Cardiovascular Drug Development—Leveraging Novel Approaches to Drive Innovation and Drug Discovery: Summary of Findings from the Novel Cardiovascular Therapeutics Conference

Thomas J. Povsic, Rob Scott, Kenneth W. Mahaffey, Robert Blaustein, Jay M. Edelberg, Martin P. Lefkowitz, Scott D. Solomon, Jonathan C. Fox, Kevin E. Healy, Aarif Y. Khakoo, Douglas W. Losordo, Fady I. Malik, Brett P. Monia, Rusty L. Montgomery, Jeffrey Riesmeyer, Gregory G. Schwartz, Steven L. Zelenkofske, Joseph C. Wu, Scott M. Wasserman, Matthew T. Roe

The need for novel approaches to cardiovascular drug development served as the impetus to convene an open meeting of experts from the pharmaceutical industry and academia to assess the challenges and develop solutions for drug discovery in cardiovascular disease. The Novel Cardiovascular Therapeutics Summit first reviewed recent examples of ongoing or recently completed programs translating basic science observations to targeted drug development, highlighting successes (protein convertase sutilisin/kexin type 9 [PCSK9] and neprilysin inhibition) and targets still under evaluation (cholesteryl ester transfer protein [CETP] inhibition), with the hope of gleaning key lessons to successful drug development in the current era. Participants then reviewed the use of innovative approaches being explored to facilitate rapid and more cost-efficient evaluations of drug candidates in a short timeframe. We summarize observations gleaned from this summit and offer insight into future cardiovascular drug development. The rapid development in genetic and high-throughput drug evaluation technologies, coupled with new approaches to rapidly evaluate potential cardiovascular therapies with in vitro techniques, offer opportunities to identify new drug targets for cardiovascular disease, study new therapies with better efficiency and higher throughput in the preclinical setting, and more rapidly bring the most promising therapies to human testing. However, there must be a critical interface between industry and academia to guide the future of cardiovascular drug development. The shared interest among academic institutions and pharmaceutical companies in developing promising therapies to address unmet clinical needs for patients with cardiovascular disease underlies and guides innovation and discovery platforms that are significantly altering the landscape of cardiovascular drug development.