Identifying drug-target proteins based on network features

Proteins rarely function in isolation inside and outside cells, but operate as part of a highly interconnected cellular network called the interaction network. Therefore, the analysis of the properties of drug-target proteins in the biological network is especially helpful for understanding the mechanism of drug action in terms of informatics. At present, no detailed characterization and description of the topological features of drug-target proteins have been available in the human protein-protein interaction network. In this work, by mapping the drug-targets in DrugBank onto the interaction network of human proteins, five topological indices of drug-targets were analyzed and compared with those of the whole protein interactome set and the non-drug-target set. The experimental results showed that drug-target proteins have higher connectivity and quicker communication with each other in the PPI network. Based on these features, all proteins in the interaction network were ranked. The results showed that, of the top 100 proteins, 48 are covered by DrugBank; of the remaining 52 proteins, 9 are drug-target proteins covered by the TTD, Matador and other databases, while others have been demonstrated to be drug-target proteins in the literature.