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Single-cell analysis tools for drug discovery and development
Open accessAbstract
The genetic, functional or compositional heterogeneity of healthy and diseased tissues presents major challenges in drug discovery and development. Such heterogeneity hinders the design of accurate disease models and can confound the interpretation of biomarker levels and of patient responses to specific therapies. The complex nature of virtually all tissues has motivated the development of tools for single-cell genomic, transcriptomic and multiplex proteomic analyses. Here, we review these tools and assess their advantages and limitations. Emerging applications of single cell analysis tools in drug discovery and development, particularly in the field of oncology, are discussed.
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“Recent significant advances in single-cell technologies, especially the single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) technology, have enabled the analysis of intercellular heterogeneity at a very fine resolution8,9 and helped us to have many breakthroughs in understanding disease mechanisms10, such as breast cancer11, liver cancer12 and COVID-1913.”
From ASGARD is a single-cell guided pipeline to aid repurposing of drugs (2023) · cites this paper as [8]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Heath, J. R., Ribas, A., & Mischel, P. S.
- Affiliations
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- University of California San Diego (US)
- Corresponding author
- Heath, James R.
- Venue
- Nature Reviews Drug Discovery
- Published
- 2015-12-16
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 204-216
- ISSN
- 1474-1776 (ISSN-L)
- 1474-1784
- PMC
- PMC4883669
- OpenAlex
- W2248179576
- Cited by
- 473
- References
- 173
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 28 · 2024: 30 · 2023: 51 · 2022: 39 · 2021: 43 · 2020: 56 · 2019: 61 · 2018: 75 · 2017: 56 · 2016: 20
- FWCI
- 4.88
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature Reviews Drug Discovery (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (5u54ca119347-03)
- National Cancer Institute (5U54 CA119347, U54-CA119347, U54CA199090, R01CA170689)
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01NS073831)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Cancer Research › Cancer Genomics and Diagnostics
- Physical Sciences › Chemistry › Spectroscopy › Advanced Proteomics Techniques and Applications
- Keywords
- single-cell analysis, drug discovery, drug development, cellular heterogeneity, single-cell genomics, single-cell transcriptomics, single-cell proteomics, multiplex proteomics, biomarkers, disease models
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Humans, Genomics, Proteomics, Drug Discovery, Single-Cell Analysis
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