Hi there. Apologies for any confusion. I was clarifying the intent of the first comment in this thread. I will add some impressionistic comments below in case

Hi there. Apologies for any confusion. I was clarifying the intent of the first comment in this thread. I will add some impressionistic comments below in case it helps your future service. Even when a drug target is unknown, or remains mysterious, very high chances are that the target is a protein. DNA or RNA as targets are niche (DNA is often avoided as a target on purpose and it’s hard to be specific to it without DNA-like material, and RNA is still hard to target effectively, though things are improving). There is not much else of use in the cells (lipids, sugars, cofactors, and metabolites, some examples of which have been targeted by a couple drugs each over the long history of trials, often unintentionally. Small molecules are an excellent modality for an eventual approved therapy. They almost always (so far) targets a protein. They are hard to design but when they are done well they expose the target to something nature hasn’t seen before in order to get a desired effect. Sometimes people don’t care about the target itself (think recreational drugs, or phenotypic drug discovery), but the target typically remains a protein. Proteins make up the machinery of the cell. You jam or modify them to achieve desired effects.