{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.023590563774490203, 'fraction_numerical': 0.001999200319872051, 'mean_word_length': 5.465116279069767, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Chemical genetics: toward the next generation of molecular medicines.

The way to discover drugs is rapidly changing, not only because new technologies have emerged that have changed the landscape, but also because the time has come, due to both economical and ethical reasons, to move to the next generation of drugs. The first wave of molecular medicines has successfully been driven by drug discovery efforts that are almost exclusively targeting proteins, which are physiologically modulated, activated, inhibited or recognized by small molecules or peptides. Cholesterol biosynthesis inhibitors, anticancer antimetabolites that target DNA synthesis enzymes, or agonists/antagonists of G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) activated by neuroamines (e.g., serotonin, histamine, and norepinephrine) are well-known examples of important new drugs that have become available in the last 30 years. During these last three decades, advancements made in cell, molecular and structural biology and, more recently, in new emerging areas like genomics, proteomics and human genetics (in parallel with the human genome sequencing) have identified a large number of new functional proteins as potential drug targets. These proteins do not necessarily bind to small molecules or peptides in their physiological role, but they display their critical function through conformational changes and interactions with other proteins, either inside or outside of the cell. The second wave of molecular medicines will focus on this new class of protein targets. The identification and validation of new proteins whose pathological role can be successfully modulated by drug-like small molecules are key success factors in this challenging and highly competitive race for the discovery of new drugs. Furthermore, chemical genetics is going to become a key technology platform that will allow us to move quickly and efficiently toward the drugs of the future. Chemical genetics can be defined as a new discipline that uses small molecules as probes to affect and understand biological phenomena; more particularly, it is used to study protein functions in cells or whole organisms [1-3]. Drug discovery chemical genetics, actively pursued in the pharma/biotech industry, focuses mainly and almost exclusively on the druggable genome/proteome [4]. In other words, it focuses on the collection of proteins that represent an opportunity for therapeutic intervention, which are selected on the basis of two important criteria: