Compound annotation with real time cellular activity profiles to improve drug discovery

In the past decade, a range of innovative strategies have been developed to improve the productivity of pharmaceutical research and development. In particular, compound annotation, combined with informatics, has provided unprecedented opportunities for drug discovery.

In this review, a literature search from 2000 to 2015 was conducted to provide an overview of the compound annotation approaches currently used in drug discovery. Based on this, a framework related to a compound annotation approach using real-time cellular activity profiles for probe, drug, and biology discovery is proposed.

Compound annotation with chemical structure, drug-like properties, bioactivities, genome-wide effects, clinical phenotypes, and textural abstracts has received significant attention in early drug discovery. However, these annotations are mostly associated with endpoint results. Advances in assay techniques have made it possible to obtain real-time cellular activity profiles of drug molecules under different phenotypes, so it is possible to generate compound annotation with real-time cellular activity profiles. Combining compound annotation with informatics, such as similarity analysis, presents a good opportunity to improve the rate of discovery of novel drugs and probes, and enhance our understanding of the underlying biology.