Review: DNA Microarray Technology and Drug Development

On the contrary to slow and non specific traditional drug discovery methods, DNA microarray technology could accelerate the identification of potential drugs for treating diseases like cancer, AIDS and provide fruitful results in the drug discovery. The technique provides efficient automation and maximum flexibility to the researchers and can test thousand compounds at a time. Scientists find DNA microarray useful in disease diagnosis, monitoring desired and adverse outcomes of therapeutic interventions, as well as, in the selection, assessment and quality control of the potential drugs. In the current scenario, where new pathogens are expected every year, DNA microarray promises as an efficient technology to detect new organisms in a short time. Classification of carcinomas at the molecular level and prediction of how various types of tumor respond to different therapeutic agents can be made possible with the use of microarray analysis. Also, microarray technique can prove instrumental in personalized medicines development by providing microarray data of a patient which could be used for identifying diseases, treatment specific to individual and trailing disease prognosis. Microarray analysis could be beneficial in the area of molecular medicines for analysis of genetic variations and functions of genes in normal individuals and diseased conditions. The technique can give satisfactory results in single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis and pharmacogenomics studies. The challenges that arise with the technology are high degree of variability with data obtained, frequent up gradation of methods and machines and lack of trained manpower. Despite this, DNA microarray promises to be the next generation sequencer which could explain how organisms evolve and adapt looking at the whole genome. In a nutshell, Microarray technology makes it possible for molecular biologists to analyze simultaneously thousands of DNA samples and monitor their behavior patterns, which brings about a tremendous improvement over the tedious "one gene per experiment” technology that prevailed previously.