Design of experiments: A design to improve pharmaceutical research.

Many important statistical and mathematical concepts, including that of design of experiments (DOE), were ushered into pharmaceutical sciences a bit later than expected. There are many reasons for this delay which are beyond the scope of this editorial but their usefulness in current pharmaceutical R and D must be emphasized. When we design an experiment – be it causal or observational – we know one thing for sure that examining the effect of one factor at a time is not only time-consuming but also it is mostly futile. Instead, we can look at several factors (independent variables) together at different settings through different runs or experiments and look at their effects on the output or response (dependent) variable. This is a smart way of doing an experiment or even simulating or explaining one.