**6. Features of microarrays and NGS and their relevance in drug discovery**

In general, there are a variety of features for each of microarrays and NGS that render these platforms highly valuable in the arena of drug discovery and therapeutics, and these are summarized in **Table 4**.

Microarrays offer various advantages including expression analysis of cells or tissues at different states of disease, pharmacogenomics, toxicogenomics, and as well as for analysis and identification of SNPs. The microarray technology is useful for obtaining a good amount of information from small volume samples, and it is quite valuable for use in incorporating low-cost high-throughput assays in the drug discovery process. However, this technology has a number of disadvantages. These include high costs and long timelines, particularly related to re-design of microarray chips to include newly discovered genetic targets.

In comparison to microarrays, NGS offers more flexibility and higher costefficacy. In particular, this technology allows for identification of targets, screening of large numbers of compounds for use in therapeutics or treatments, as well as for identifying of unique biomarkers useful for discovery of new drug targets.


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*Microarrays and NGS for Drug Discovery DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96657*

Overall, although the word "limitation" still floats around, and with only 5% of novel molecular compounds are ultimately selected to enter the drug and therapeutic marketplace, new innovations in science and technology are critical in the arena of drug discovery and therapeutics. It is these ongoing research advances and technological innovations that will empower scientists to continue on in the pursuit of additional and more sophisticated, reliable, and efficient molecular tools, such as NGS and microarrays, that will be useful in the arena of drug discovery and therapeutics. These efforts, innovations, and technologies will undoubtedly continue to revolutionize the drug discovery industry that will aid in identifying better and more effective drugs, at much lower costs, and within shorter periods

The funding for this book chapter is ensured by the PCCDI National Project: Genomic mapping of the population in the areas radioactively contaminated with

heavy metals in order to increase national security- ARTEMIS.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

**7. Conclusions**

of time.

**Funding**

**Conflict of interest**
