Target identification and validation

Abstract Target identification and target validation are involved with the identification and validation of a target that can be modulated for a therapeutic purpose. Whilst there is much variation on what a target is and how to define one, we can consider a therapeutic target to be one that is involved with the mechanisms of a particular disease and modulation of it will affect the disease in a beneficial way. It is important to also note that when a drug fails, it tends to be due to safety concerns or lack of efficacy. There are several computational methods that are applied within the target identification stages of drug discovery, including cheminformatic methods, such as similarity searching and network-based methods. However, much information is also contained within databases and scientific publications.