Genomics in the real world

The term genomics has evolved into a catch-all term for a variety of information intensive biological methodologies. While the promise of genomics in the bio/pharmaceutical industry is great, its impact on the drug discovery pipeline has not yet been realized, excluding a few notable exceptions. As companies acquire several years of experience in working with genomic data, it is likely that the impact on the discovery process will slowly emerge as we learn to integrate these new technologies into individual discovery programs. It is clear that extracting novel biologically valid targets targets from exponentially growing amounts of sequence data requires time and considerable investment in biological research infrastructure. In order to accelerate the process of target validation, a variety of functional genomics technologies are also being developed to try to predict the effect of inhibitory compounds in advance of development. Resources spent on early stage exploratory efforts such as these can pay off by improving the success rate for screening and medicinal chemistry.