Part I- Background

1. The Path to Oncology Drug Target Validation - an Industry Perspective

Marta Cortés-Cros, Tobias Schmelzle, Volker M. Stucke and Francesco Hofmann

Part II- DNA as a tool to Modulate Drug Targets

2. Identification of Aptamers as Specific Binders and Modulators of Cell-Surface Receptor Activity

Henning Ulrich and Carsten Wrenger

3. The Design and Structure-functional Properties of DNA-based Immunomodulatory Sequences

Nikolai V. Kuznetsov

Part III-RNA Interference: From Design to Data Analysis

4. siRNA Design Principles and Off-target Effects

Sebastian Petri and Gunter Meister

5. Western Blot Evaluation of siRNA Delivery by pH Responsive Peptides

Wanling Liang, A. James Mason and Jenny K.W. Lam

6. High Throughput RNAi Screening for the Identification of Novel Targets

Meredith C. Henderson and David O. Azorsa

7. Integration of RNAi and Small Molecule Screens to Identify Targets for Drug Development

Konstantinos Drosopoulos and Spiros Linardopoulos

8. CellProfiler and KNIME: Open Source Tools for High Content Screening

Martin Stöter, Antje Niederlein, Rico Barsacchi, Felix Meyenhofer, Holger Brandl and Marc Bickle

9. PARP Inhibition as a Prototype for Synthetic Lethal Screens

Xuesong Liu

Part IV-Protein Focused Technologies

10. Structure-Based Target Druggability Assessment

Jean-Yves Trosset and Nicolas Vodovar

11. Validating Pharmacological Disruption of Protein-protein Interactions by Acceptor Photobleaching FRET Imaging

Janos Roszik, Gábor Tóth, János Szöllősi and György Vereb

12. Systematic Analysis of Complex Signal Transduction Pathways using Protein Fragment Complementation Assays

Thomas I. Koblizek, Ann Siehoff and Anthony Pitt

13. Reverse-Phase Protein Microarrays and Their Utility in Drug Development

Maria Isabella Sereni, Mariaelena Pierobon, Roberto Angioli Emanuel F. Petricoin III, and Mitchell J. Frederick

Part V. Innovative Cell Culture Techniques to Mimic Tissue Microenvironments

14. A Cell Culture System that Mimics Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Cells Microenvironment for Drug Screening and Characterization

Alessandro Natoni

15. 2-Dimensional vs. 3-Dimensional in vitro Tumor Migration and Invasion Assays

Miriam Zimmermann, Carol Box and Suzanne A. Eccles

16. Tumor Spheroid-based Migration Assays for Evaluation of Therapeutic Agents

Maria Vinci, Carol Box, Miriam Zimmermann and Suzanne A. Eccles

17. The NeuroSphere Assay (NSA) Applied to Neural Stem Cells (NSCs) and Cancer Stem Cells (CSCs)

Rossella Galli

Part VI- Genetically Engineered Animal Models to study Gene Functions

18. Genetically Engineered Animal Models for in vivo Target Identification and Validation in Oncology

Gemma Texidó

19. Target Validation in Mice by Constitutive and Conditional RNAi

Aljoscha Kleinhammer, Wolfgang Wurst, Ralf Kühn

20. In vivo Target Validation by Inducible RNAi in Human Xenograft Mouse Models

Marco Mazzoletti and Gemma Texido

Part VII- Translational Methods to validate Biomarkers

21. Brightfield In Situ Hybridization Methods to Discover Gene Amplific