 Five methods of transcriptome analysis / drug candidate identification were compared in their ability to successfully produce drug targets in at least one prior study showing a survival benefit from sepsis. 1) Pathprint-PDN: Comparison of pathways by Pathprint and drug candidate analysis by pathway-drug network (PDN); 2) DEGs-PDN: Comparison of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) by standard methods and drug candidate analysis by PDN; 3) Random: Drugs chosen at random from the CMap database; 4) DEGs-LINCS: Comparison of DEGs generated by standard methods and drug candidate analysis using LINCS database and 5) BarCode-LINCS: Comparison of DEGs generated by BarCode method and drug candidate analysis using LINCS database. The three gene-level methods were found to be no better at generating positive drugs than picking drugs at random. All methods produced significantly lower percent positive rates than the Pathprint-PDN method (p<0.02). Prism software (GraphPad) was used to compare the frequency of prior studies showing benefit for drug leads Fisher"s exact tests 