Human monogenic disorders - a source of novel drug targets.
The decrease in new drug applications and approvals over the past several years results from an underlying crisis in drug target identification and validation. Model organisms are being used to address this problem, in combination with novel approaches such as the International HapMap Project. What has been underappreciated is that discovery of new drug targets can also be revived by traditional Mendelian genetics. A large fraction of the human gene repertoire remains phenotypically uncharacterized, and is likely to encode many unanticipated and novel phenotypes that will be of interest to pharmaceutical and biotechnological drug developers.
British Columbia Cancer Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V5Z 1C3, Canada.
Ryan R
RR
Brinkman
Marie-Pierre
MP
Dubé
Guy A
GA
Rouleau
Andrew C
AC
Orr
Mark E
ME
Samuels
D002874:Chromosome Mapping; D015195:Drug Design; D030342:Genetic Diseases, Inborn / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000235:genetics*; D015894:Genome, Human; D016045:Human Genome Project; D006801:Humans; D010641:Phenotype