The best global seller among oncology drugs in 2018 is lenalidomide, an analog of thalidomide. It took 53 years and a circuitous route from the discovery of thalidomide to approval of an analog for use in treatment of cancer. We understand now a lot more about the genetic and molecular basis of diseases than we did in 1953 when thalidomide was discovered. We have also no shortage of chemical libraries with hundreds of thousands of compounds, both synthetic and natural. What we need are better ways to search among these rich resources for compounds with the potential to do what we want them to do. This review summarizes examples from the literature that make Drosophila melanogaster a good model to screen for drugs, and discusses knowledge gaps and technical challenges that make Drosophila models not as widely used as they could or should be.

中文翻译：

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果蝇中的药物筛选；为什么，何时，何时不？

2018年在肿瘤药物中全球销量最好的药物是来那度胺，它是沙利度胺的类似物。从沙利度胺的发现到批准用于治疗癌症的类似物用了53年的时间和and回的路线。与1953年发现沙利度胺时相比，我们现在对疾病的遗传和分子基础有了更多的了解。我们也不乏拥有数十万种合成和天然化合物的化学文库。我们需要的是更好的方法，可以在这些丰富的资源中搜索有潜力做我们希望它们做的化合物。这篇综述总结了使果蝇成为筛选药物的良好模型的文献实例，并讨论了导致果蝇的知识差距和技术挑战。 模型没有得到应有或应有的广泛应用。