Network-based in silico drug efficacy screening

The increasing cost of drug development together with a significant drop in the number of new drug approvals raises the need for innovative approaches for target identification and efficacy prediction. Here, we take advantage of our increasing understanding of the network-based origins of diseases to introduce a drug-disease proximity measure that quantifies the interplay between drugs targets and diseases. By correcting for the known biases of the interactome, proximity helps us uncover the therapeutic effect of drugs, as well as to distinguish palliative from effective treatments. Our analysis of 238 drugs used in 78 diseases indicates that the therapeutic effect of drugs is localized in a small network…