In silico pathway analysis: the final frontier towards completely rational drug design

Pathway and network analyses are rapidly becoming the mainstream tools for functional interpretation of high-throughput data and for drug discovery. Current scientific literature has plenty of examples on how pathway analysis tools are used across all steps of drug development pipeline. Pathway and network analyses already enable rational selection of drug targets based on the knowledge about disease biology. Pathway analysis tools are also popular for the analysis of drug action and validation of drug efficacy and toxicity. This article overviews current achievements of pathway analysis and suggests future directions for its application in drug development such as rational design of combinatorial therapy and personalized medicine.