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XenoPort Inc.

 
• By Deborah Erickson

XenoPort Inc. thinks it is on the way to standardizing solutions to the vexing problem of bioavailability. The company's founders believe they can engineer drugs to take advantage of the body's own active transport mechanisms.

The process of drug discovery has changed dramatically in the past decade. In some ways, new methods such as combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening have brought drugmakers what they always wanted: stacks and stacks of potential drug candidates. But other development challenges remain stubbornly unchanged. Companies still have to cull the best compounds, and improve their pharmacokinetic properties, to produce genuinely viable therapies.

Researchers are getting better at optimizing the affinity and selectivity of compounds, but when it comes to improving bioavailability—the ability...

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