The modern drug developers? guide for making informed choices among the diverse target identification methods

Target Discovery and Validation: Methods and Strategies for Drug Discovery offers a hands-on review of the modern technologies for drug target identification and validation. With contributions from noted industry and academic experts, the book addresses the most recent chemical, biological, and computational methods. Additionally, the book highlights techologies that are applicable to ?difficult? targets and drugs directed at multiple targets, including chemoproteomics, activity-based protein profiling, pathway mapping, genome-wide association studies, and array-based profiling.

Throughout, the authors highlight a range of diverse approaches, and target validation studies reveal how these methods can support academic and drug discovery scientists in their target discovery and validation research. This resource:

-Offers a guide to identifying and validating targets, a key enabling technology without which no new drug development is possible
-Presents the information needed for choosing the appropriate assay method from the ever-growing range of available options
-Provides practical examples from recent drug development projects, e. g. in kinase inhibitor profiling

Written for medicinal chemists, pharmaceutical professionals, biochemists, biotechnology professionals, and pharmaceutical chemists, Target Discovery and Validation explores the current methods for the identification and validation of drug targets in one comrpehensive volume. It also includes numerous practical examples.


Alleyn Plowright obtained his PhD in organic chemistry with Professor Gerald Pattenden at the University of Nottingham, UK in 1999, and continued with postdoctoral studies in chemical biology with Professor Andrew Myers at Harvard University, USA. In 2002, he joined AstraZeneca and in 2008 he became Associate Director Medicinal Chemistry leading the Lead Optimisation section driving new programs to the clinic. In 2012, Dr. Alleyn took on the role of Senior Principal Scientist and Project Leader in the Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases Innovative Medicines unit leading multidisciplinary research, including phenotypic screening and driving new projects into and through the drug project portfolio. In 2017 he moved to Sanofi, taking on the position as Head Integrated Drug Discovery Germany leading a cross-disciplinary research unit driving projects from target validation through to pre-clinical development. He has been instrumental in delivering a number of compounds into the clinic, including two compounds currently in phase 2 clinical trials, and has authored more than 50 publications and patents.