A computational method for drug repositioning using publicly available gene expression data

Abstract

The identification of new therapeutic uses of existing drugs, or drug repositioning, offers the possibility of faster drug development, reduced risk, lesser cost and shorter paths to approval. Several computational methods have been proposed in the literature that makes use of publicly available transcriptional data to reposition drugs against diseases. In this work, we carry out a data mining process using publicly available gene expression data sets associated with a few diseases and drugs, to identify the existing drugs that can be used to treat genes causing lung cancer and breast cancer.