Open Targets
Accelerate target identification and validation with Open Targets — the go-to open-source platform for data-driven drug target prioritization & discovery. Open Targets is a public-private initiative led by the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) that comprehensively aggregates public data sources for drug discovery.  The Hyve supports research teams with integration, deployment, and customisation of Open Targets, transforming large-scale genomic and clinical data into actionable insights. From gene-trait associations to target prioritisation, we ensure your discovery pipeline is built on open science and solid, scalable foundations.
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We facilitate the setup of Open Targets on your infrastructure, so your proprietary biomedical data stays secure and under your control. Alternatively, we can host an instance for you in a cloud-based environment of your choice. Our deployments include advanced authorization and user access control, giving you full control over who can view and use sensitive data.
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We take care of processing and importing your data into Open Targets, including GWAS and QTL datasets, and target-disease data. Our team handles the technical work so you can focus on analyzing results and advancing your research.
If your research requires functionality that Open Targets does not offer, we can build these features for you. Our developers work closely with you and the Open Targets community to design and implement custom solutions that fit your research needs. You can explore examples of such solutions in our article section.
We offer hands-on training tailored to your data and research goals. Whether you want to explore Open Targets, load your own datasets, or understand the platform’s full potential, we help your team develop the right skills to work confidently and independently.
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Our experts help you align and integrate Open Targets with your research strategy, whether as standalone product or as part of your drug discovery pipeline. From setting up efficient workflows to improving data synergy, we provide expert advice to help you get the most out of the Open Targets platform.
Extract actionable insights from the Open Targets—even without deep bioinformatics expertise—and focus directly on target discovery.
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Deploy Open Targets on your own infrastructure, enabling secure integration of proprietary biomedical data while retaining full control over access and privacy.Â
Benefit from the latest features developed in collaboration with the Open Targets community and other research teams—shared improvements, zero vendor lock-in.
Adapt Open Targets to your research needs—from supporting custom data types and target-disease associations to building tailored visualizations for target validation.
Combine public datasets such as GWAS and QTL studies with your internal data to create a unified and enriched research environment inside Open Targets.
An intuitive user interface and streamlined workflows help you move from data to discovery faster—cutting down time spent on manual data handling.
Identify the genes that associate with a disease or phenotype and discover new drugs.
Rapid comparison of evidence for different associations: see instantly which data sources support a particular association.
User control over the weighting of contributing evidence from each data source: choose the weight you give to contributing evidence to the final association—including your own data sources.
Searching and applying filters by various target, disease, or phenotype categories: see only what matters to you.
Ability to 'pin' a list of targets to create a customised list: come back to the analysis that matters to you and continue where you left off.
Upload a list of interested entities and export results: continue analysis in an environment of your choice.
The Hyve has supported many pharmaceutical companies and research institutes in transforming drug discovery with the Open Targets platform. By seamlessly integrating large-scale biological data, including genomics, transcriptomics, and clinical data, our solutions enable efficient target identification and validation. From exploring gene-disease associations to assessing druggability, we help research teams accelerate the discovery of novel therapeutic targets with actionable insights.
Can Open Targets handle large-scale datasets from our in-house studies?
Yes, it can! Whether dealing with large-scale genetics data—such as GWAS or QTL studies—or other types of omics data, Open Targets provides a comprehensive and user-friendly platform for data exploration. The newly introduced genetics analysis pipeline, Gentropy, is specifically designed to handle vast datasets efficiently, delivering insights in a short amount of time. On the back-end, a GraphQL API written in Scala is optimized for performance with large-scale data. Meanwhile, the intuitive user interface offers powerful sort, search, and filtering options, making it easy to navigate and interpret complex datasets.
What makes Open Targets better than using individual public datasets?
What sets Open Targets apart isn’t only the high-quality data—it’s also the powerful integration of the platform. Open Targets brings together data from a wide range of trusted public sources, offering users a unified platform to explore diverse datasets simultaneously. This aggregation enables seamless navigation across multiple data types and studies in one place. More than just a data hub, Open Targets provides a robust framework to score and quantify target-disease associations, helping researchers prioritize the most promising therapeutic targets with confidence.
How secure is a private Open Targets deployment?
A private deployment of Open Targets offers robust security, backed by expert data and software engineers trained in industry-standard best practices. Our team collaborates closely with your IT department to ensure the deployment aligns with your organization’s security protocols—whether hosted on your infrastructure or your preferred cloud platform. For added control, Open Targets can be integrated with powerful user access management tools, such as the open-source solution Keycloak, to manage permissions and ensure secure, role-based access.
I keep hearing about gentropy, what is that?
Gentropy is a powerful Python package designed to streamline the interpretation and analysis of GWAS and functional genomics data for drug target identification. It offers a comprehensive toolkit for harmonizing, analyzing, and prioritizing genetic signals to accelerate drug discovery. Replacing the legacy Open Targets Genetics pipeline, Gentropy delivers a faster, more optimized and scalable solution. Its output is fully compatible with the Open Targets Platform, making it easy to integrate results as target-disease evidence.