Patent Document ID: 8000949
Application ID: 11499437
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for identifying a human drug or gene therapy target, said method comprising: a) collecting metabolic data for a non-disease state and a disease state; b) linking the data into at least two metabolic pathways using a relational database; c) ranking the metabolic pathways based on their relevance to human metabolism, wherein the ranking of the metabolic pathways comprises assigning each pathway to one of the following categories, from the most relevant to the least relevant to human metabolism: (i) a multi-step pathway wherein all of the reactions are catalyzed by known human enzymes and/or enzymes that have open reading frame (ORF) candidates in the human genome; (ii) a multi-step pathway wherein only the first and last reactions are catalyzed by known human enzymes and/or enzymes that have ORF candidates in the human genome; (iii) a multi-step pathway wherein only an intermediate reaction is catalyzed by an identified human enzyme or an enzyme that has an ORF candidate in the human genome; and (iv) a multi-step pathway wherein none of the reactions are catalyzed by identified human enzymes or enzymes that have ORF candidates in the human genome; d) generating structured annotations of the ranked metabolic pathways; e) identifying interconnections between the ranked and annotated metabolic pathways; f) reconstructing human metabolism by integrating information obtained in steps a) to e); and g) identifying a human drug or gene therapy target by comparing differences between the non-disease and disease states using the reconstruction of step (f).