Target-based drug discovery is a waste of time, says a systematic review of 32,000 articles and patents from the last 150 years:

…only 9.4% of small-molecule drugs have been discovered through “target-based” assays. Moreover, the therapeutic effects of even this minimal share cannot be solely attributed and reduced to their purported targets, as they depend on numerous off-target mechanisms unconsciously incorporated by phenotypic observations. The data suggest that reductionist target-based drug discovery may be a cause of the productivity crisis in drug discovery.

So it would seem. And even those drugs initially developed to target a single protein or mutation end up having many more unanticipated effects. Back to the jungle and the ocean depths, then?

(ᔥDerek Lowe)