TargetTri Drug target profiling

TargetTri is an online platform for profiling drug targets in terms of safety and efficacy. TargetTri integrates text-mining, data-mining and network biology to obtain a complete view on effects exerted by target modulation. Queries can be initiated from either a protein/gene or a therapeutic indication.

At TNO, we know drug targets and we can help you assess your target in an early phase of drug development. By combining our diverse capabilities, we offer services that extract, integrate and interpret data regarding your target and translate this into valuable information for decision making. With a track record in target safety assessment for many years, we do offer additional services in the area of efficacy assessment and biomarker identification. In addition, we offer tailor-made solutions and are developing the target intelligence platform TargetTri together with the pharmaceutical industry to be used as an in-house tool for more efficient target assessments.

The TargetTri project was started as a spin-off of TNO's Target Safety Assessment (TSA) activities, in which safety liabilities of exploratory drug targets are being identified. The toxicological risks identified are used to make strategic choices about the progression of target-drug combinations and for the design of toxicity studies in the drug discovery pipeline. As a result, the high attrition rates in drug development - which have presented a challenge to the pharmaceutical industry - may be reduced.

Given its multidisciplinary nature, the vast amount of literature, data types and data sources target profiling acitivities, such as TSAs, are intensely time consuming and often under stress in competition with other core activities and late-stage projects in pharma. To allow that these mostly hand-made target-centric assessments are performed more efficiently and accurately, a web-based platform for semi-automated drug target triaging (TargetTri) was designed.

Together with the pharmaceutical industry, TNO is improving current practices and harmonizing industry approaches for identifying and addressing target-related safety liabilities in TargetTri. In parallel, TNO is developing a Target Discovery Module in TargetTri to enable indication-oriented target identification.