Proteomic approaches in drug discovery

To find a new drug against a chosen target usually involves high-throughput screening, wherein large libraries of chemicals are tested to determine their ability to modify the target. Before a target can be chosen, however, it must first be discovered. The omics era has brought unprecedented abilities to screen cells at the gene, transcript, protein, and metabolite level in search of novel drug targets. Of the big four classes of biomolecules, proteins remain the principal target of drug discovery. The recent developments in proteomic technologies have brought with them ability to comparatively screen large numbers of proteins within clinically distinct samples. This capability has enabled non-biased studies in which the goal is to discover proteins that may act as suitable diagnostic biomarkers or therapeutic drug targets. Although proteomics technology has brought with it much hope, there are still many challenges associated with leveraging the experimental data into the discovery of novel drug targets.

Section editor:Hugo Kubinyi – University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany