engleski

Evolving "-omics" technologies in the drug development process

The strength of the "-omics" technologies lies in their ability to monitor the activity of bio-molecules in a large-scale, high-throughput fashion shortening the overall time needed for the discovery of a new drug. Recent technology advances results in higher reproducibility and enhanced sensitivity thus allowing for more precise deciphering of a pathological process. However, because of strict standardization criteria that demand strong financial support and availability of highly-specialized experts, the importance of dedicated core facilities or specialized units becomes central. Today, the "-omics" approach in biomedicine has become more pathway-oriented and is complemented by several other experimental approaches, data analyses, pathway informatics, literature mining and mathematical modelling processes, all of which are contained within systems biology. We believe that systems biology as an integrated approach can offer solution to some of the major bottlenecks in the drug discovery and can foster target identification allowing the drug to target molecules relevant to disease pathways. In this paper, we will touch upon the current state of the mainstream "-omics" technologies already in use in drug discovery as well as their shortcomings and perspectives for future applications.

drug discovery; microarrays; mass spectrometry; protein arrays; systems biology; biological pathways

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