Backtranslating clinical knowledge for use in cheminformatics--what is the potential?

‘From bench to bedside’ is seeing a very strong focus in current Drug Discovery. However, often overlooked are the advantages that turn out if data is used ‘from bedside to bench’, the fact one can also make beneficial use of clinical information in early Drug Discovery. By leveraging the wealth of clinical data carried by each marketed drug, down to the level of a single person, one can gain a deep insight that can be leveraged in conjunction with chemical structure information and therefore within all kinds of cheminformatics analyses. This supports the design of drugs that better fit the requirements of a well-defined subpopulation.