Target Validation Platform launches
The Centre for Therapeutic Target Validation (CTTV) has launched a new web platform for life-science researchers that helps them identify therapeutic targets for new and repurposed medicines. The CTTV Target Validation Platform provides evidence for more than 21,800 therapeutic targets, spanning in excess of 8800 diseases and phenotypes, underscoring the centre’s commitment to open data sharing for the benefit of the whole scientific community.
Identifying and prioritising evidence-based relationships between a biological target for a drug and a disease can be extremely challenging and expensive. To address this challenge, the CTTV, a collaboration between GSK, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), has created a web-based platform (www.targetvalidation.org) that draws on public data resources to help drug discovery. This state-of-the-art web interface will allow researchers from academia and the pharmaceutical industry to access thousands of target profiles that summarise the evidence for the involvement of a specific gene product with a disease.
“The huge growth in human genetic and genomic data has transformed research in a very short space of time, but there is a gap between basic and translational research. We have learned so much about the links between genes, tissue function and disease, and we need solid partnerships like the CTTV to make sure that knowledge makes it to the people who make medicines. The Target Validation platform is all about enabling communities to work together, making the hand-off from basic research to drug discovery smoother.”
Dr Jeff Barrett Director of the Centre for Therapeutic Target Validation (CTTV)
The Target Validation Platform provides a single, robust infrastructure that integrates high-level information from key sources of evidence covering common and rare disease genetics, somatic mutations in cancer, with tissue and cellular expression patterns, information mined from published scientific literature, approved drugs, reaction pathways and animal models. Co-designed with biologists and based on user-experience research, the comprehensive and intuitive resource is easy to search by target, disease or therapeutic area.
“Our ability to identify and validate effective targets can mean the difference between developing a new medicine successfully or wasting valuable time and resources pursuing dead ends. The collaborative work underway at the Centre for Therapeutic Target Validation provides a real opportunity for us to make a profound impact on attrition and, even more importantly, to tackle unexpected pathways for new medicine. The launch of this new open access platform is a major step in how we’ll truly open up the discoveries made through this collaboration to benefit the broader scientific community.”
Lon Cardon Senior Vice President of GSK R&D
“We worked very closely with biologists working in different environments to make sure the platform would be both useful and intuitive. Today we’ve launched a service that provides evidence for over 21,800 targets, with more than 8800 structured disease and clinical phenotype terms – but we expect those numbers to grow substantially as we integrate CTTV experimental project data.”
Ian Dunham Scientific Director of the Centre for Therapeutic Target Validation (CTTV)
“The CTTV enables researchers in academia to work with industry, bringing the research bases together in a precompetitive environment to deliver insight into the genomics underlying disease. The databases and analytical methods developed will increase our knowledge of the biological targets of diseases to help advance treatments.”
Professor Sir Mike Stratton Director of the Sanger Institute
“The CTTV is already transforming research in drug discovery through its specific integration. We are delighted at how CTTV has leveraged the high-quality data from EMBL-EBI, providing integration and visualisation for both commercial and academic users, and we’re looking forward to seeing the community use this platform in earnest.”
Dr Ewan Birney Director of EMBL-EBI
The CTTV welcomes anyone who is interested in finding connections between genes and diseases to try the platform and share their feedback.
More information
Browse the new Target Validation platform at http://www.targetvalidation.org
CTTV Scientific Director Ian Dunham will give a presentation about the platform at the “Target Validation Using Genomics and Informatics” conference on the Wellcome Genome Campus, 8-10 December 2015: /our-events/target-validation-using-genomics-and-informatics-2015/
Feedback, help and support: support@targetvalidation.org
