Techniques: Application of systems biology to absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicity

It is widely recognized that either predicting or determining the absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicity (ADME/Tox) properties of molecules helps to prevent the failure of some compounds before they reach the clinic. Consequently, there has been considerable research into developing better in silico, in vitro and in vivo methods and models. Toxicogenomics, proteomics, metabonomics and pharmacogenomics represent the latest experimental approaches that can be combined with high-throughput molecular screening of targets to provide a view of the complete biological system that is modulated by a compound. The functional interpretation and relevance of these complex multidimensional data to the phenotype observed in humans is the focus of current research in toxicology. Multiple content databases, data mining and predictive modeling algorithms, visualization tools, and high-throughput data-analysis solutions are being integrated to form systems-ADME/Tox. In this review, we focus on the most recent advances and applications in this area.