The discovery and development of new active ingredients to control arthropod populations and circumvent the inevitable evolution of insecticide resistance has been of consistent interest to the field of insecticide science.  However, despite the significant interest in the identification of novel targets and chemicals, the diversity of the insecticide arsenal and novel target sites has remained relatively limited for the past 2 decades.  The Insecticide Resistance Action Committee (IRAC) only recognizes approximately 25 different modes of action, or exploited insecticide target sites, with the extreme majority of these targeting neural proteins.  This number is dramatically lower than the number of exploited human drug targets, which range between 200-400 depending upon classification.  After the sequencing of the human genome, Hopkins and Groom analyzed the Investigational Drugs and Pharmaprojects databases and identified 399 current drug targets based on known ligands with drug-like properties.  They also estimated that approximately 5-10% of the genes from the human genome are pharmacologically tractable and represent exploitable targets, which is approximately 1500-3000 genes representing putative targets.  Considering this, it is reasonable to speculate the arthropod genome comprises significantly more tractable target sites than the 25 that are currently exploited.   The large-scale sequencing of vector genomes has intensified in recent years and the rise of insect genomics has enabled the discovery of insecticide targets via functional characterization of proteins that are essential to survival or other functions. The significant advancements in data mining, bioinformatic tools, and recent initiatives (i.e. i5K) will benefit insecticide development in a similar manner to human drug development.  Mechanisms for understanding the identity of targets encoded by the arthropod genome and the allocation of resources within academic and industrial research will be discussed. <br/>

Perspectives on the identification and development of new insecticide targets

256th National Meeting (2018)

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