The role of functional genomics in selecting disease targets for antibody-based therapy

Antibodies have clearly established themselves as comprising a significant segment of marketed drugs. The rapid evolution of technologies for generating antibodies and optimizing them for therapeutic applications has led to a succession of approvals over the last decade. The success of genomics in elucidating the contents of the human genome has provided a vast number of new potential targets for antibody therapy. Future development of antibody drugs will depend upon our ability to identify new targets from the tens of thousands of recently identified genes. This effort, too, will be technology-driven. This review provides a general overview of the technologies available for enabling new target selection, technologies that are collectively referred to as "functional genomics." For organizational purposes, the technologies are divided into the following broad categories: expression profiling, comparative genomics, loss of function strategies, proteomics, and computational biology. Through judicious application of combinations of these functional genomics technologies, we can anticipate a steady stream of novel well-validated targets for antibody therapy for years to come. (C) 2004 Wiley-liss, Inc.