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Validating cancer drug targets

Abstract

A cancer drug target is only truly validated by demonstrating that a given therapeutic agent is clinically effective and acts through the target against which it was designed. Nevertheless, it is desirable to declare an early-stage drug target as ‘validated’ before investing in a full-scale drug discovery programme dedicated to it. Although the outcome of validation studies can guide cancer research programmes, strictly defined universal validation criteria have not been established.

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Figure 1: Evolution of target-validation paradigms.
Figure 2: Schematic overview of the four cancer drug discovery tracks.

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Benson, J., Chen, YN., Cornell-Kennon, S. et al. Validating cancer drug targets. Nature 441, 451–456 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04873

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