ABSTRACT
Selection of drug targets forms the foundation of a long and risky drug development process with high attrition that can vary among different therapeutic areas and different phases of drug development (David et al., 2009; Fryburg, 2010; Paul et al., 2010). Beginning from the selection of a drug target candidate to regulatory approval, the overall probability of success is less than 1% (Fryburg et al., 2011) and mostly the majority of failures occur in phase II and III because either the efcacy or safety is not achieved (Arrowsmith, 2011; Ledford, 2011). Efcacy failures occur because either: (i) the drug fails to achieve the required pharmacology; or (ii) target and mechanism targeted by the drug did not signicantly contribute to the disease or; (iii) target and mechanism represented only in a subset of patient population (i.e., high heterogeneity of patient population) (Laifenfeld et al., 2012).
