Drug repurposing

Drug repurposing is the process of finding new therapeutic applications for previously used, available or older medications. Drug repurposing, refers to a set of approaches that aim to adapt the current pharmacological effects to new applications. Repurposing can help uncover new medicines for diseases at a low cost and in less time. Availability of prior knowledge regarding safety, efficacy and the appropriate route of administration significantly reduces the development costs and cuts down the development time resulting in less effort required for successfully bringing a repositioned drug to market. There are three approaches for drug repurposing i.e. disease-centric, target-centric and drug-centric. Knowledge-based drug repurposing utilizes the drug-target related information, including drug-targets network, chemical structures of drug and targets, pathways, adverse effects etc. The approach is called as target repositioning if the new indication is treated by acting with the same target protein as previously determined. Approximately 80% of drug repositioning projects have occurred based on this target based approach. In repurposed drug's the preclinical, pharmacokinetic, Pharmacodynamic and toxicity information are previously known thus minimising the risk of compound creation. Drug repositioning involves multiple factors such as technology, commercial models, patents, investments and market demands. Considering the associated advantage of drug development through repurposing approach it is expected to gain popularity in near futur