About Program 3
Title: Target Validation
 Program 3 looks at the fact that distinct activation pathways are required to turn on the destructive activities of macrophages, resulting in the release of a range of harmful effector molecules. Each of these molecules or pathways holds the promise of better drug treatments.
The overall objective of this research program is to develop systems for validating genes that may potentially hold the key to new treatments for chronic inflammatory diseases. Then, our researchers use these systems to validate the role of target genes in a biological process that is critical for the pathology of inflammatory diseases.
A ‘candidate gene’ must meet strict criteria before it enters the validation pipeline. The validation systems have been developed in cell lines that are designed to be useful in high-throughput drug-screening assays in order to manage the large number of candidates that will be generated in the ‘discovery’ programs.
Once a ‘candidate gene’ has been discovered in the other research programs, it is put through the validation process.
Find out more about chronic inflammatory diseases | 
