Throughout history, drugs have generally been designed to target one single biological molecule. Usually, these drugs target proteins and avoid any side effects that could be caused by mistargeting a biological molecule. The dominant drug hypothesis has been "one target, one drug", but complex diseases like cancer or Alzheimers are caused by multiple factors. 

State University of New York at Stony Brook

Multi-target drugs have displayed a higher efficacy, improved safety, and simpler administration as compared to a single target. Multi-target drugs are different in the way in that they have multiple biological targets and generally contain several main steps in target identification, validation, hits identification, and lead component optimization. 

Multi-target drug discoveries and applications to Alzheimer's disease

Wang, T., Liu, X., Guan, J., Ge, S., Wu, M., Lin, J., & Yang, L. (2019, March 05). Advancement of multi-target drug discoveries and promising applications in the field of Alzheimer's disease. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0223523419302089


Multi-target drug discovery

Single-target drugs

An alternative to multi-target drugs is the use of combination therapy. Combination therapy involves the use of different drugs with different mechanisms being applied at the same time to treat complex diseases. An example of this can be when acetylcholinesterase inhibitors with memantine and an NMDA receptor are used as an anti-Alzheimer's disease drug. Although these drugs do work, they hold disadvantages in drug toxicity, cost, and increased risk of infection. 

Combination Therapy

Multi-target drugs (MTDs) or polypharmacology refer to the activity of multiple targets at certain concentrations in the body. Multi-target drugs have been used in clinical trials and consist of 21% of the FDA-approved new molecular entities. 

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