Panos Zalmas leads the Open Targets Validation Lab at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK. The lab is a core capability of the Open Targets Consortium, an innovative public-private partnership that uses human genetics and genomics data for systematic drug target identification and prioritisation. The aim of the Validation Lab is to improve the chances of target adoption into drug discovery pipelines, by providing an independent source of in silico triage, orthogonal experimental validation and mechanistic characterisation of therapeutic candidates emerging from target identification programmes across multiple therapy areas, such as oncology and neurodegeneration.