The translational relevance of Drosophila in drug discovery
After nearly a century of successful research, the value of the fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model system for genetic analysis is well established. In the past few years, Drosophila has also successfully been used for living organism based chemical screenings [1] [2] Because it is still a new tool in this field, the value of flies for drug discovery is still under assessment and one of the recurrent and fair questions that remains open regards whether or not it is likely that compounds identified through screenings in flies are also going to be functional in mammals. To contribute to an answer, we have inverted the question and searched the literature for compounds that were originally known for their activity in human cells and were later shown to have the same molecular mechanism of action in Drosophila We found that such compounds are not rare. Table EV1 shows a selection of 60 such compounds, including actin and microtubule poisons; inhibitors of DNA topoisomerases, kinases, and phosphatases; alkylating agents;
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