Drug target identification in sphingolipid metabolism by computational systems biology tools: Metabolic control analysis and metabolic pathway analysis

Sphingolipids regulate cellular processes that are critically important in cell’s fate and function in cancer development and progression. This fact underlies the basics of the novel cancer therapy approach. The pharmacological manipulation of the sphingolipid metabolism in cancer therapeutics necessitates the detailed understanding of the pathway. Two computational systems biology tools are used to identify potential drug target enzymes among sphingolipid pathway that can be further utilized in drug design studies for cancer therapy. The enzymes in sphingolipid pathway were ranked according to their roles in controlling the metabolic network by metabolic control analysis. The physiologically connected reactions, i.e. biologically significant and functional modules of network, were identified by metabolic pathway analysis. The final set of candidate drug target enzymes are selected such that their manipulation leads to ceramide accumulation and long chain base phosphates depletion. The mathematical tools’ efficiency for drug target identification performed in this study is validated by clinically available drugs.