Drug Repurposing: Giving Existing Drugs a Second Life

Introduction

Now a days, making a new Drug for any disease is very difficult because it is very costly and time taking Process. If we are repurposing of any drug. Then we can save your time also know the effectiveness of drug on other disease. Always You can’t repurpose all drug. There are some criteria for repurposing of any drug. If we are choosing any drug for repurposing then that drug must be Structure similar for that disease interaction for better response or action. There is many software available for repurposing of drug. That is not easy process to redesigned any drug to work as similar property to another disease like. But that process is cost-effective and you can also save your time in this process. If we are making new drug then it may be taking 10-15 years. And you have to do many clinical trials for new drug. That is very long-time taking process. Also cost will be increased.

By this process we can make repurposing drug quickly. Also save many life. In short time. This method is very useful in Covid Pandemic.

Method of Drug repurposing: -

Repurposing of drug method will be varied on activity of drug. In Drug repurposing method generally, we use in-silico method for that process. This is computation or virtual screening method, there are many drugs structure is available on database. Through the database of drug structure, you can easily identify drug-target interactions. That method makes you easily to identify repurposing drug. In In-silico method you can pre identify the how much your drug will be interacted with your target. If interaction is very similar then redesigned that drug. In-vitro and In-vivo method also used in drug repurposing. In-silico method is Higley used in this process.

Table: -Drug repurposing concept in drug development

Some Examples of Repurposing Drug: -

Drugs repurposed for Covid-19

There are many Repurposing drug designed in this word by the using of database. There is very big role of Bioinformatics in Drug repurposing. Here some examples of repurposing Drug.

Therapeutic effect	Drug	Proposed mechanism of action
Viral entry inhibitors	Estradiol	ACE2 receptor downregulation preventing interaction of spike protein with cellular ACE2 receptor
	Spironolactone
	Isotretinoin/retinoic acid
	Bicalutamide	TMPRSS2 inhibition
	Nafamostat
	Camostat mesilate

 

 

 

 

 

 

Top mini-blockbuster and blockbuster repurposed drugs: -

Drug	Original indication	New indication (year)
Gemcitabine	Anti-vira	Various Cancers (Various)
Raloxifene	Osteoporosis	Invasive Breast Cancer (2007)
Finasteride	Hypertension	Benign prostatic hyperplasia (1992)
		Male Pattern Baldness (1997)
Thalidomide	Anti-Nausea	Erythema Nodosum Leprosum (1998)
		Multiple Myeloma (2006)
Sildenafil	Angina	Erectile Dysfunction (1998)
		Pulmonary artery Hypertension (2005)
Rituximab	Various Cancers	Rheumatoid Arthritis (2004)
Dimethyl fumarate	Psoriasis	Multiple Sclerosis (2013)

 

Conclusion: -

·  There is a very big role in Covid to identify the drug interaction which drugs interact better with covid. (Repurposing drugs is not a permanent solution of the covid, but many life saved by this method)

·   There are many drugs being repurposed for many diseases.

·    It is cost-effective.

·   Time-saving method.

·   Easy to use.

·  We have a database of all drug and their structure. We can easily know about drug interactions.

Reference: -

·   https://pharmacia.pensoft.net/article/72548/

·   https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/molecular-biosciences/articles/10.3389/fmolb.2021.628144/full

·   Andronis C, Sharma A, Virvilis V, Deftereos S, Persidis A (2011) Literature mining, ontologies and information visualization for drug repurposing. Briefings in Bioinformatics 12: 357–368. https://doi. org/10.1093/bib/bbr005

·  Baker NC, Ekins S, Williams AJ, Tropsha A (2018) A bibliometric review of drug repurposing. Drug discovery today 23: 661–672. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.drudis.2018.01.018

“Although a bit of an exaggeration, there is a lot of truth     in the saying that we do not need to find new drugs; rather we need to find the patients who can benefit from existing drugs” - Christopher Lipinski.