Phage display technology for target determination of small-molecule therapeutics: an update

Introduction Our understanding of the mechanism of action of bioactive small molecules contributes to the research and development of new medical drugs, as well as elucidating the pathological mechanisms underlying various diseases. Researchers in this field are committed to a very ambitious goal: the discovery of novel therapeutic compounds along with their molecular targets. To achieve this goal, new methodological developments are indispensable. Areas covered This review gives an update on the advancements of phage display (PD) technology in the past decade (2011–2020) for determining the targets of the small molecule therapeutics. In particular, other than providing a brief overview of this field of research, we focus on reporting the research trends and the results solely obtained using this strategy. Expert opinion Despite the development of bioinformatics tools and artificial intelligence (AI)-mediated methods, affinity-guided information obtained experimentally are still indispensable to identify drug-protein interactions. By taking advantage of small-molecule-oriented PD methods and their improvements, the extension of the druggable proteome will be further expanded, providing new opportunities to generate small-molecule therapeutics.