Evidence map›Paper›PMID 25033736›Full record

ReviewNature reviews. Drug discovery2014

Phenotypic screening in cancer drug discovery - past, present and future.

John G Moffat, Joachim Rudolph, David Bailey

Abstract readHistorical ArticleReview
PubMed Publisher
In one paragraph

Review in Nature reviews. Drug discovery, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 198 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
198citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

198 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Review
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  13. A Framework for Autonomous AI-Driven Drug Discovery.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026
    Article
  14. Review
  15. Review
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  19. Advances in Cytotoxicity Testing: From In Vitro Assays to In Silico Models.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025
    Review
  20. Article

138 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

John G MoffatDepartment of Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology, Genentech, South San Francisco, California 94080, USA.
Joachim RudolphDepartment of Discovery Chemistry, Genentech, South San Francisco, California 94080, USA.
David BaileyIOTA Pharmaceuticals, St Johns Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge CB4 0WS, UK.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

There has been a resurgence of interest in the use of phenotypic screens in drug discovery as an alternative to target-focused approaches. Given that oncology is currently the most active therapeutic area, and also one in which target-focused approaches have been particularly prominent in the past two decades, we investigated the contribution of phenotypic assays to oncology drug discovery by analysing the origins of all new small-molecule cancer drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over the past 15 years and those currently in clinical development. Although the majority of these drugs originated from target-based discovery, we identified a significant number whose discovery depended on phenotypic screening approaches. We postulate that the contribution of phenotypic screening to cancer drug discovery has been hampered by a reliance on 'classical' nonspecific drug effects such as cytotoxicity and mitotic arrest, exacerbated by a paucity of mechanistically defined cellular models for therapeutically translatable cancer phenotypes. However, technical and biological advances that enable such mechanistically informed phenotypic models have the potential to empower phenotypic drug discovery in oncology.

Indexed as

Antineoplastic AgentsDrug DiscoveryDrug Screening Assays, AntitumorForecastingHistory, 20th CenturyHistory, 21st CenturyHumansNeoplasmsPhenotypeAntineoplastic Agents

Identifiers

PMID25033736

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.