Figure 3. Flow of information in development of targeted therapies.

Advances in molecular biology revealed a number of targets that were identified at the bench and led to successful drugs at the bedside (‘bench to bedside’) Conversely though, advances in sequencing technology led to the discovery of various genetic disorders that also provided convincing targets for intervention. Such “experiments of nature” facilitated the understanding of what the consequence of interfering with a target might be and thus provided impetus to go back to the bench (‘bedside to bench to bedside’). In other circumstances, development of a targeted therapy did not have the expected result. Fortunately, in a number of cases this led investigators to go back to the bedside and rethink disease mechanisms, and find the right disease for the therapy (‘bench to bedside to bedside’).