Meta-basic estimates the size of druggable human genome.

We present here the estimation of the upper limit of the number of molecular targets in the human genome that represent an opportunity for further therapeutic treatment. We select around approximately 6300 human proteins that are similar to sequences of known protein targets collected from DrugBank database. Our bioinformatics study estimates the size of 'druggable' human genome to be around 20% of human proteome, i.e. the number of the possible protein targets for small-molecule drug design in medicinal chemistry. We do not take into account any toxicity prediction, the three-dimensional characteristics of the active site in the predicted 'druggable' protein families, or detailed chemical analysis of known inhibitors/drugs. Instead we rely on remote homology detection method Meta-BASIC, which is based on sequence and structural similarity. The prepared dataset of all predicted protein targets from human genome presents the unique opportunity for developing and benchmarking various in silico chemo/bio-informatics methods in the context of the virtual high throughput screening.