Researchers have discovered a new anti-epileptic drug target and a whole new approach that promises to speed up the discovery of future drugs to treat debilitating diseases, including epilepsy. The researchers developed an advanced computational approach to predict new drug targets. As a proof-of-concept, the investigators applied the computational approach to epilepsy and discovered a new drug target, which they then experimentally confirmed by showing that the pharmacological blockade of the target had anti-seizure effects. "The identification of drug targets is highly challenging, particularly for diseases of the brain," explains Michael Johnson, a professor in the division of brain sciences at Imperial College London. "With our approach--which we named the'Causal Reasoning Analytical Framework for Target discovery,' or CRAFT--we discovered and validated a potential new anti-epileptic drug in less than two years."