Tools for target identification and validation

Reliable technologies for addressing target identification and validation are the foundation of successful drug development. Microarrays have been well utilized in genomics/proteomics approaches for gene/protein expression profiling and tissue/cell-scale target validation. Besides being used as an essential step in analyzing high-throughput experiments such as those involving microarrays, bioinformatics can also contribute to the processes of target identification and validation by providing functional information about target candidates and positioning information to biological networks. Antisense technologies (including RNA interference technology, which is recently very 'hot') enable sequence-based gene knockdown at the RNA level. Zinc finger proteins are a DNA transcription-targeting version of knockdown. Chemical genomics and proteomics are emerging tools for generating phenotype changes, thus leading to target and hit identifications. NMR-based screening, as well as activity-based protein profiling, are trying to meet the requirement of high-throughput target identification.