Editorial [ Omics: An Approach for Drug Targets Guest Editor: Virendra S. Gomase Co-Guest Editor: Somnath Tagore ]

Omics consists of the mathematical, statistical and computing methods that aim to solve biological problems using nucleotides and amino acid sequences and related information. Omics is about searching biological databases, comparing sequences, looking at protein structure and more generally, asking biological question with a computer. Biological or genetic information is the fundamental concept of Omics. Omics is the symbiotic relationship between computational sciences. Omics concepts provide a distinct knowledge layer for biologists, especially when they become interested in high throughput experimental analyses. Modern biology is becoming an information science and such omics classification can provide skeletons for well defined fields. Omics is one of the most convenient and extensive reformations of biology since evolution and inheritance concepts were proposed in mid 1800 and molecular sequences and structures were deciphered in 1960 and 1970. Thus, Omics can be defined as the integration of Genomics, Proteomics, Transcriptomics, Metabolomics, Oncogenomics, Pharmacogenomics, Epigenomics, Toxicogenomics, Kinomics and other important branches of science. It is a scientific field that studies how the genome is involved in responses to environmental stresses. It combines studies of gene expression, cell and tissue-wide protein expression and to understand the role of gene-environment interactions in disease. One of the important aspects of omics research is the development and application of bioinformatics tools and databases in order to facilitate analysis, mining, visualization and sharing of the vast amount of biological information being generated in this field. This rapidly growing area promises to have a large impact on many other scientific and medical disciplines as scientists could now generate complete descriptions of how components of biological systems work together in response to various stresse and drugs. Current Drug Metabolism guest editor issue content finds out more information about key technologies for Omics, analytical technologies, separation techniques, omics in practices, technology development in omics, applications of omics, current research and their approaches. The wide area covered by this issue articles gives an idea of how diverse the field is. My coauthors Dr. Karbhari Kale, Smruti Changbhale worked together to bring high quality articles to this Current Drug Metabolism issue. We worked hard to take the journal papers to well organized format. Editors have not only given knowledgable information but also guided in putting this knowledge for the benefit of the society in the form of journal. Omics are increasingly driven by research integration, the ability to pull together seemingly unrelated branches of basic and applied sciences to produce in a timely fashion innovative and efficacious solutions to multidisciplinary human health problems. The editorial staff Dr. Mahmood Alam, Dr. Ms. S. Abbasi (Bentham Science Publishers Ltd) are to be congratulated for providing a superb forum for publishing such science and the many and varied new directions that challenge how we think about and address drug discovery. The rising healthcare costs in most developed countries can probably be reduced by enlarging the fraction of variety of most sophisticated supramolecular-based drug formulations offered on the global pharmaceutical markets. Further advancements in research targeted delivery of macromolecular drugs and omics could be expected by combining contemporary technologies and enable to achieve optimal new drug development. Hoping that such promising views will soon be changed into reality also with help of our publishing efforts, I would like to extend my appreciations, as the Guest Editor of the special issue of Current Drug Metabolism, to all authors who kindly contributed in this issue.