Funding forgotten proteins

A new NIH program is highlighting understudied members of druggable protein classes including GPCRs, kinases, nuclear receptors and ion channels. The goal is to support exploratory projects that might otherwise go unfunded because of a lack of preliminary data.

Since the completion of the human genome project, it has become increasingly clear that the vast majority of NIH-funded research is focused on a relatively small subset of proteins, even among protein classes considered druggable. For example, the Structural Genomics Consortium published an analysis that showed that as of September 2012 only 9 of the 512 kinases in the human genome were the primary target of approved small molecule or biologic drugs.¹...