In silico identification of novel therapeutic targets

The availability of the human genome sequence is a 'once in a lifetime' opportunity for scientists to uncover all possible human drug-targets. As the sequence is very large, the best way to identify new genes rapidly is by computational (in silico) methods. There are now many examples in which pharmaceutical companies have identified genes of interest initially by in silico analysis. High-throughput data-generation techniques, such as microarray analysis, are key to the generation of human genome data. Bioinformatics techniques are therefore certain to play an increasingly important role in drug discovery.