Question: how many new medicines have you discovered till today.

Mark Ridgill answered on 14 Oct 2025:

Discovering a new medicine is difficult, costly and takes a long time, maybe up to 5 years to find the right molecule and another 5 to develop it. Some scientists go their whole careers without discovering a new medicine but the work they do allows others to learn and make breakthroughs.
I’ve been lucky enough to be part of the teams that discovered Emend, which is a medicine used to help cancer patients being treated with certain drugs to not be sick when they take their medicine and Maxalt which is a medicine that treats migraine.
I’ve been part of teams that have found potential medicines to treat schizophrenia and another for strokes and a fe other diseases but they didn’t make it on to the market.
My proudest achievement is a recent project to treat cancer where the potential medicine is currently in clinical trials, so please keep your fingers crossed!