Table 5 Various timeline dependant drug discovery approaches and the expected success rate

Golden era

1950s

Natural product research

Whole cell screening

High

Medicinal chemistry era

1975s

Synthetic tweaking

Whole cell screening

Broad spectrum

High

Resistant era

2000s

Modern drug discovery

Target based

Ligand based

Broad spectrum

Low

Narrow-spectrum era

2025s

Unconventional discovery

In vivo essential target

Combinatorial approach

Diagnostic development

Predicted