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How molecular profiling could revolutionize drug discovery

Nature Reviews Drug Discovery volume 4, pages 345–350 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Information from genomic, proteomic and metabolomic measurements has already benefited target discovery and validation, assessment of efficacy and toxicity of compounds, identification of disease subgroups and the prediction of responses of individual patients. Greater benefits can be expected from the application of these technologies on a significantly larger scale; by simultaneously collecting diverse measurements from the same subjects or cell cultures; by exploiting the steadily improving quantitative accuracy of the technologies; and by interpreting the emerging data in the context of underlying biological models of increasing sophistication. The benefits of applying molecular profiling to drug discovery and development will include much lower failure rates at all stages of the drug development pipeline, faster progression from discovery through to clinical trials and more successful therapies for patient subgroups. Upheavals in existing organizational structures in the current 'conveyor belt' models of drug discovery might be required to take full advantage of these methods.

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Figure 1: Molecular profiling and drug toxicity.
Figure 2: Coherent analysis of expression profiles, genotype scans and phenotypic data from cross-bred mice.
Figure 3: Integrated use of molecular profiling and clinical data.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank P. Linsley and G. Cavet of Merck/Rosetta, and I. Khalil of Gene Network Sciences, for granting permission to describe the unpublished work on comparison of model predictions to siRNA gene-knockout experiments. The authors also thank H. Dai of Merck/Rosetta for granting permission to describe in advance of its publication the work in reference 43.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. GHC Technologies, Inc., 505 Coast Boulevard South, Suite 309, La Jolla, 92037, California, USA

    Roland B. Stoughton

  2. Merck & Co., Inc., Molecular Profiling & Cancer Research, MRL, 770 Sumneytown Pike, PO Box 4, WP14-2500, West Point, 19486, Pennsylvania, USA

    Stephen H. Friend

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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Roland B. Stoughton.

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Competing interests

R.B.S. is an employee of GHC Technologies, Inc. and S.H.F. is an employee of Merck & Co., Inc., which uses molecular-profiling technology; some of the research summarized in this article derives from worked conducted at Merck.

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Stoughton, R., Friend, S. How molecular profiling could revolutionize drug discovery. Nat Rev Drug Discov 4, 345–350 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd1696

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