identify novel drug target candidate proteins?
Yes. The following sets, altogether 397 proteins in the current version of SignaLink, are likely to be enriched with drug targets: (i) predicted human pathway member proteins, (ii) human multi-pathway proteins, and (iii) proteins participating in cancer-related cross-talks. We analyzed the drug target relevance of these 397 human signaling proteins by examining 4 key properties: disease-relatedness, localization in the plasma membrane, enzymatic functions, and kinase domain content. To identify the most promising drug target candidates from the 397 proteins selected in the previous paragraph, we first listed those 10 that do have all 4 key properties, i.e., disease-related enzymes (with a kinase domain) localized in the membrane. Out of these 10 proteins 6 (ANPRA, CASK, EGFR, ErbB2, IGF1R, and INSR) are currently used drug targets, while the other 4 (IRAK1, MAP3K13/LZK/MLK, ROR2, and TGFBR1) are not. ROR2 is essential during bone formation (Liu et.al, Mol Endocrinol 2007) and the other
