Computational biology approaches for selecting host-pathogen drug targets
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Updated: Jun 4, 2026

Using Human Differentially Expressed Gene Lists to Perform Downstream Pathway Enrichment Analysis and Target Prioritization
Published on: October 3, 2025
James R Brown1, Michal Magid-Slav, Philippe Sanseau
1Computational Biology, GlaxoSmithKline, 1250 South Collegeville Road, UP1345, PO Box 5089, Collegeville, PA 19426-0989, USA.
Abstract:
The proliferation of genomic platform data, ranging from silencing RNAs through mRNA and microRNA expression to proteomics, is providing new insights into the interplay between human and pathogen genes during infection: the so-called 'host-pathogen interactome'. Exploiting the interactome for novel human drug targets could provide new therapeutic avenues towards the treatment of infectious disease, which could ameliorate the growing clinical challenge of drug-resistant infections. Using the hepatitis C virus interactome as an example, here we suggest a computational biology framework for identifying and prioritizing potential human host targets against infectious diseases.
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