Talk:Undruggable protein

Merge Proposal

This article should be merged into Biological target, either as a sub-section within the "Drug targets" section of that page. First, it's awkward to have an article based on a negative concept since it lacks the good context that would be provided by the main concept page. Second, undruggability is not a stable concept, but is more of an opinion or result based on previous and current drug development efforts. Some scientists believe nothing is undruggable (see this interview with Gerard Evan, for example). New techniques can be invented that provide an approach to druggability (see this). So it's better to think in terms of some targets being difficult to drug rather than as inherently undruggable.

Other thoughts: How about having a category to classify articles about genes/proteins that have so far been difficult to target with drugs? Might be useful, though they would need to be re-classified if/when they become easily druggable. And regarding the name of this article ('Undruggable protein'): it's better to think in terms of undruggable targets (not just proteins) in order to include biomolecules such as small RNAs that are difficult to target. SteveChervitzTrutane (talk) 21:43, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree that this stub should be merged, however I think druggability is probably a more appropriate destination. The later article is a mess, but I have started to edit it. Boghog (talk) 02:46, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I have been bold and merged this article into Druggability#Undruggable_targets. Boghog (talk) 10:34, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I was just about to fix my merge request to follow the proper merging protocol when I noticed you already took action! I'm ok with the boldness, and druggability seems like a fine place to merge it. I agree that some work is needed there, as well as in related articles. For example, drug discovery and biological target don't seem to know about each other. We can add some 'see also' links for now, but would be good to think about how to better tie these articles together. SteveChervitzTrutane (talk) 07:41, 22 May 2012 (UTC)