opentargets

is a Knowledge Graph.

Open Targets is a collaborative effort to systematically identify and prioritise the best targets to safely and effectively treat rare and common diseases.

Domains

health, biomedical

Homepage

opentargets

Repository

GitHub

Infores ID

Unknown

FAIRsharing ID

Unknown

Product Summary

Products

From this Resource
ID Name URL Category Format Description
opentargets.platform Open Targets Platform platform.opentargets.org GraphicalInterface http The Open Targets Platform integrates ...
opentargets.api.graphql Open Targets Platform GraphQL API graphql ProgrammingInterface GraphQL API for accessing Open Target...
opentargets.api.rest Open Targets Platform REST API rest ProgrammingInterface REST API for accessing Open Targets P...
From other Resources
ID Name URL Category Format Description
ubkg.neo4j UBKG Neo4j Docker Distribution ubkg-downloads.xconsortia.org GraphProduct Turnkey neo4j distributions that depl...
ubkg.csv UBKG Ontology CSV Files ubkg-downloads.xconsortia.org GraphProduct csv Ontology CSV files that can be import...
bioteque.embeddings Bioteque Embeddings embeddings Product Network embeddings of the Bioteque gr...
epigraphdb.graph EpiGraphDB Graph Database graph-database GraphProduct neo4j Integrated graph knowledge base combi...

Details

Open Targets: Delivering Systematic Drug Target Selection

Open Targets is a pre-competitive partnership that systematically identifies and prioritizes drug targets to improve the success rate for developing safe and effective medicines. The consortium brings together expertise from leading pharmaceutical companies and academic research institutions to generate and integrate public data for better target selection in drug discovery.

Overview

Open Targets was established as a public-private partnership to use human genetics and genomics data for systematic drug target identification and prioritization. The consortium is built on three core principles:

  1. A systematic approach: Systematically identifying and prioritizing the best targets to safely and effectively treat rare and common diseases
  2. Open exchange of ideas: Commitment to making data, methods, and results publicly available to foster open research
  3. Multidisciplinary collaboration: Non-exclusive partnerships that encourage free exchange of ideas, expertise, and data

The consortium is formed by partner institutions including the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), Genentech, GSK, MSD, Pfizer, Sanofi, and the Wellcome Sanger Institute.

Key Products and Resources

Open Targets Platform

The Open Targets Platform is the flagship product that integrates public data relevant to the associations between targets and diseases. It provides evidence-based validation for therapeutic targets by bringing together information from genetics, genomics, transcriptomics, drugs, animal models, and scientific literature. The Platform helps researchers:

  • Identify and prioritize targets with strong evidence for association with a disease
  • Explore the target-disease associations through multiple data types
  • Find potential safety concerns for targets
  • Discover potential drug repurposing opportunities

Open Targets Genetics

The Open Targets Genetics portal provides access to genetics data from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and connects these to potential causal genes using various functional genomics data types. It helps researchers:

  • Identify genetic associations for human traits and diseases
  • Link genetic variants to likely causal genes using both statistical and functional evidence
  • Explore colocalizations between traits that might share causal variants
  • Investigate the functional impact of genetic variants

Data Integration and Informatics

Open Targets’ core bioinformatics work focuses on bringing together various data types relevant to human disease biology and target identification. The data ecosystem includes:

  1. Target-disease associations: Evidence connecting genes/proteins to diseases from multiple data sources
  2. Target annotation: Information about targets including protein structure, expression, and pathway involvement
  3. Disease annotation: Disease classification, phenotypes, and ontology mapping
  4. Drug annotation: Information about compounds, clinical trials, and mechanism of action

All data is made available through user-friendly web interfaces and APIs (GraphQL and REST) that allow programmatic access for integration into computational workflows.

Research Focus Areas

Open Targets’ research program focuses on three main therapeutic areas:

  • Oncology
  • Neurodegeneration
  • Immunology and Inflammation

The consortium applies whole genome approaches and high-throughput methods to these disease areas, leveraging the expertise of all partners in emerging and established technologies.

Open Source Commitment

Open Targets is committed to open science principles. Its software, data, and methods are publicly available, with code repositories accessible on GitHub. This open approach facilitates collaboration and encourages the broader scientific community to build upon and extend Open Targets’ work.

Impact on Drug Discovery

By providing systematic evidence for target-disease associations, Open Targets helps to address one of the key challenges in drug development: selecting the right targets. The platform reduces the risk of failure in later clinical development by enabling data-driven decisions early in the drug discovery process.

Through its integrated data resources and research programs, Open Targets is transforming how targets are selected for drug discovery, leading to more effective treatments for patients with both common and rare diseases.

Automated Evaluation

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Created: May 29, 2025 | Last modified: January 06, 2026