Objective

Discovering novel targets that may be modulated by pharmacological agents will lead to a better understanding and hopefully control of many diseases that are still eluding the scientific community. Doing so is a challenge at many levels starting with the fundamental question: what is a good target? Target discovery actors of the post-genomic area realise that human physiology and genetics can’t be overlooked and strive to understand the relevant signalling pathways, develop more accurate models and integrate data from multiple sources to enhance predictability. During the presentation, we will describe the journey form target identification to target validation using several examples of novel ligand/receptor pairs. We will discuss the merit of a multi-disciplinary approach and speculate on how novel technologies may impact ligand/receptor matching. After explaining how we approach receptor identification and confirmation, we will attempt to explain why certain targets may be considered better than others, for the time being.