DRUG REPOSITIONING, AN APPROACH FOR IDENTIFICATION OF NEW THERAPEUTICS

Abstract

Drug repositioning of FDA approved drugs is an innovation stream of drug discovery. This review elaborates the advantages, approaches and challenges of drug repositioning. This low cost, less risky and less time-consuming drug repositioning includes effective computational and experimental approaches to identify new indications for existing drugs. Similar to drug discovery, there are various challenges to repurpose a drug such as selection of an appropriate approach and target population, intellectual property (IP) protection and etc. This review also focuses on history and success stories of drug repositioning. An alternative approach, drug combination of two or multiple drugs has dramatically increased the success rate of drug repositioning. This synergistic drug repositioning is a promising strategy to combat various diseases such as infectious diseases, cancer, neurological disorders and many rare diseases. Various examples of successful synergistic drug repositioning have been described in this review. Finally, we can say that synergistic drug repositioning provides a new way to drug discovery research.