Goodbye DDNews; hello DDN

Your eyes do not deceive you and yes, you are in the right place. The new face of DDN  magazine is here.

We have been teasing our new logo and the imminent return to our DDN  moniker (and the Drug Discovery News name) for months now, letting you know a redesign was on the way and mentioning our revamped website (now ready for you to enjoy at www.drugdiscoverynews.com)—and now you get to see the fruits of our labors.

Part of the reason for the redesign is to give you a more visually pleasing look (our new cover style being a standout in that regard) and easier-to-read format but in the end, you are going to find the same kind of content you have come to expect from us—with a few extras thrown in to make it even better.

For example, you will notice that the news sections have undergone some name changes to better reflect their content and to better organize articles. One of the biggest changes is the addition of the “Drug Discovery & Disease Mechanisms” and “Preclinical Research & Development” sections. The former will focus on such topics as new molecules, disease targets and new insights into how illnesses operate in our bodies. The latter will focus more on subjects like ADME/Tox and testing with in-vitro, in-vivo, in-silico and organ-on-chip models. This brings us down from three news sections before (Discovery, R&D and Preclinical), which had some overlaps with each other.

“Clinical Trials & Studies” and “Diagnostics Research & Development” don’t deviate much from their original names and will remain much as they were before in terms of content.  We’ve also added a “Tools and Technology” section to bring you news of the hardware, software and sometimes services that can help you do your research and development more effectively.

Mostly unchanged from before are the  “Business & Government Policy” and “Late-breaking News” sections (which do not appear this issue but will be making their appearances again soon).

You will also notice as you exit this section that we have moved our feature content farther forward, with this issue giving you a Special Report on Infectious Disease beginning on page 6 (of the physical or PDF versions of the issue, that is).

And that brings me to my next topic, the focus on infectious disease in much of this issue’s content—and not just COVID-19,  mind you. While the Special Report, for example, does touch upon issues related to the current pandemic and SARS-CoV-2, the basic premise is to focus on the important of antiviral therapeutics and not just a tunnel-vision focus on vaccination. 

In completely non-COVID infectious disease news, we have coverage of a virtual fireside held by Eli Lilly on the topic of antibiotic resistance in our “Discovery & Disease Mechanisms” section and also news of a molecular discovery that could improve treatment of sepsis in the same section.

That section also has some COVID-related news, with a story about integrative genome-scale CRISPR screening to identify genes and drug targets to protect against SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Elsewhere in the magazine, an article on positive study results for a COVID-19 peptide vaccine in “Preclinical Research & Development,” preliminary results from a Phase 1 clinical study of a nasal spray being developed for COVID-19 in “Clinical Trials & Studies” and a new testing tool that could identify COVID-19 virus particles in patients' exhaled breath in “Diagnostics Research & Development.”

Obviously, we left plenty of room for several other disease topic areas in our news, but once again we see how broadly and deeply the pandemic has penetrated all areas of life, including in pharma discovery and development work.

If you still haven’t had enough of topics of an infectious nature, we will have a Focus Feature on Vaccines next issue, and there is always the Infectious Disease Network Facebook page at www.facebook.com/InfectiousDiseaseNetwork  that we share with our sister publications at LabX Media.

Thanks for being a reader, and enjoy the new look of DDN.