The Essentiality of Drug Targets: an Analysis of Current Literature and Genomic Databases

Essential genes encode proteins thought to be crucial for the survival of an organism. However, the role of essential genes in human disease and their suitability as drug targets is less clear. Here, we use a recent catalog of nearly 9000 known essential and nonessential genes to evaluate their involvement as therapeutic targets in human diseases. We find that essential genes are more likely than nonessential genes to play a part in specific therapeutic areas such as cardiovascular diseases and neoplasms. We also find significant differences between essential and nonessential genes among protein classes relevant to drug discovery. Taken together, our analyses suggest that the essentiality status of a potential new target is an important consideration in drug discovery.