Caenorhabditis elegans for preclinical drug discovery

Given the high expenditure (which may run in millions of dollars) and the time (many years) to identify and develop a drug against any disease, a faster and less expensive system of drug discovery will be ideal. The model organism, Caenorhabditis elegans fits here well. Already the C. elegans disease models have significantly contributed to the identification of new drugs and validation or finding novel functions of the known drugs. For example, an FDA-approved antihypertensive drug, reserpine, and a common over-the-counter drug, acetaminophen, are identified to provide protection against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease in the C. elegans model respectively. In this article, we discuss the various applications of C. elegans in diseases and drug discovery, viz, available disease models, high-throughput drug screening, identification/validation of drugs, toxicity evaluation and pharmacodynamics like cytochrome P-450 induction. We suggest that C. elegans could be definitely incorporated in the primary stage of drug discovery and target identification. At the secondary level, it could be used for toxicity screening to understand the mechanism of action and preclinical validation of drugs.