In medicine, biotechnology and pharmacology,<unk>  is the process by which<unk> s are<unk> d and/or designed.
In the past most<unk> s have been<unk> d either by identifying the active ingredient from traditional remedies or by serendipitous<unk> . 
A new approach has been to understand how disease and infection are controlled at the molecular and physiological level and to target specific entities based on this knowledge.
The process of<unk>  involves the identification of candidates, synthesis, characterization, screening, and assays for therapeutic efficacy. Once a compound has shown its value in these tests, it will begin the process of<unk>  development prior to clinical trials.
Despite advances in technology and understanding of biological systems,<unk>  is still a long process with low rate of new therapeutic<unk> .
Information on the human genome, its sequence and what it encodes has been hailed as a potential windfall for<unk> , promising to virtually eliminate the bottleneck in therapeutic targets that has been one limiting factor on the rate of therapeutic<unk> .
However, data indicates that "new targets" as opposed to "established targets" are more prone to<unk>  project failure in general.
This data corroborates some thinking underlying a pharmaceutical industry trend beginning at the turn of the twenty-first century and continuing today which finds more risk aversion in target selection among multi-national pharmaceutical companies.
Drug discovery
Drug design
Clinical engineering
Cancer research
Dosing
Research
Semiconductor device fabrication
Health promotion