Challenges in the design of multitarget drugs against multifactorial pathologies: a new life for medicinal chemistry? "While there is a research of modern phenotypic assays, network pharmacology deals with the second problem, namely the proper selection of the targets."
Luca Costantino · 2013
The medicinal chemistry field is in a period of crisis, mirrored in the low number of new drug approvals, especially considering the parallel increasing levels of investments in research. This happens when, at the same time, combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening increased the number of tested substances and the redutionistic approach (the magic bullet against a target assayed in in vitro test systems) was followed for the development of new drugs, in order to reduce promiscuity (off-target interactions), which was linked to the appearance of side effects [1].