Pharmacorank

Pharmacorank prioritizes proteins associated with specific diseases using gene similarity profiling of protein functions to identify candidates for drug repositioning.

Key Features:

• Objective Prioritization: Uses gene similarity profiling based on protein functions to assign priority scores to proteins linked to specific diseases.
• Predictive Correlation: Produces protein priority scores that correlate with the clinical relevance of associated medications, with a reported correlation coefficient of 0.9978 from a weighted second-order polynomial fit.
• Pertinency Score: Computes a pertinency score by plotting protein priority scores against the percentage of known medication-binding targets per disease to identify a general threshold for candidate consideration.
• Repositioning Candidate Identification: Highlights drug repositioning candidates with high predicted pertinency scores for further investigation.
• Disease-Specific Insights: Provides focused analyses for specific diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, to inform potential repositioning opportunities.

Scientific Applications:

• Target Prioritization: Identifies high-priority protein targets for disease-specific therapeutic investigation.
• Drug Repositioning Prioritization: Ranks existing drugs by predicted pertinency to suggest novel indications and prioritize candidates for experimental validation.

Methodology:

Gene similarity profiling based on protein functions assigns protein priority scores, which are correlated with medication relevance using a weighted second-order polynomial fit (reported r = 0.9978), and priority scores are plotted against percentage of known medication-binding targets to derive a pertinency score and threshold.