SuperTarget goes quantitative: update on drug–target interactions

There are at least two good reasons for the on-going interest in drug–target interactions: first, drug-effects can only be fully understood by considering a complex network of interactions to multiple targets (so-called off-target effects) including metabolic and signaling pathways; second, it is crucial to consider drug-target-pathway relations for the identification of novel targets for drug development. To address this on-going need, we have developed a web-based data warehouse named SuperTarget, which integrates drug-related information associated with medical indications, adverse drug effects, drug metabolism, pathways and Gene Ontology (GO) terms for target proteins. At present, the updated database contains >6000 target proteins, which are annotated with >330 000 relations to 196 000 compounds (including approved drugs); the vast majority of interactions include binding affinities and pointers to the respective literature sources. The user interface provides tools for drug screening and target similarity inclusion. A query interface enables the user to pose complex queries, for example, to find drugs that target a certain pathway, interacting drugs that are metabolized by the same cytochrome P450 or drugs that target proteins within a certain affinity range. SuperTarget is available at http://bioinformatics.charite.de/supertarget.