“One-target-one-disease” paradigm has been around for decades, prompting numerous drug discovery programs focusing on identifying small molecules for targeting only one specific protein (or other targets) believed to be responsible for the disease mechanism.
However, the limitations of such approach and the inability of “one-target-one-disease” way of thinking to comprehend the complexity of biological processes led an increasing interest in polypharmacology programs, multi-omics, and network biology.
One such company that is using network driven drug discovery approach is e-Therapeutics. Watch their recent video with an illustrative explanation of how understanding a bigger picture of cells and disease mechanisms can be a much more efficient way of creating better drugs. Since network driven drug discovery approach is a data-driven approach, the company uses artificial intelligence (AI) to efficiently deal with complex datasets.