Fig. 1. Metabolomics-guided drug target finding workflow.
A Cells are treated with the compound of interest, and metabolite changes are measured with high throughput metabolomics. B Machine learning is used to identify drug-specific perturbations by comparison to publicly available drug response metabolomic profiles. C Key perturbed metabolites are provided as supplements to attempt growth rescue, and metabolic modeling is used to analyze the results to determine whether patterns are consistent with inhibition of certain metabolic pathways by the compound. D Structural analysis identifies candidate enzymes through homology to known targets of the drug. E Candidate genes are validated through a combination of overexpression of the target to rescue growth, activity assays to verify binding and inhibition of the target, and imaging to determine phenotypic effect.