Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về sinh học được đăng trên tạp chí sinh học Journal of Biology đề tài: Drug-therapy networks and the prediction of novel drug targets. | Journal of Biology BioMed Central Minireview Drug-therapy networks and the prediction of novel drug targets Zoltan Spiro Istvan A Kovacs and Peter Csermely Address Department of Medical Chemistry Semmelweis University PO Box 260 H-1444 Budapest 8 Hungary. Correspondence Peter Csermely. Email csermely@ Published 31 July 2008 Journal of Biology 2008 7 20 doi jbiol8l The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at http content 7 6 20 2008 BioMed Central Ltd Abstract A recent study in BMC Pharmacology presents a network of drugs and the therapies in which they are used. Network approaches open new ways of predicting novel drug targets and overcoming the cellular robustness that can prevent drugs from working. Despite a significant and continuous increase in medical research spending the number of new drugs approved and new drug targets identified each year has remained almost constant for the past 20-25 years with about 20 new drugs and about five new targets per year. Lengthy development procedures and the high risk of unexpected side-effects in advanced-stage clinical trials reduce the ability of the drug development process to be innovative. At this rate it will take more than 300 years to double the number of available drugs 1 . However there are several ways to overcome these burdens. Promising areas of drug design include wide-range screens of existing drugs seeking novel applications combination therapy that is the use of several drugs or short DNA oligomers called aptamers together 24 and the development of multi-target drugs 5 . The organization of our rapidly growing knowledge on diseases disease-related genes drug targets and their structures and drugs and their chemical structures gives us another exciting way to discover novel areas of drug development. Several networks have recently been constructed to help drug discovery 1 6-9 . In the network concept a complex system is perceived as a
