REPOSITIONING OF DRUGS: AN APPROACH FOR NEW DRUG DISCOVERY

Gayatri Chhatre and Dr. Vithal M. Kulkarni*

ABSTRACT

Drug repositioning (DR) (also known as repurposing or reprofiling) is the new strategy of research of nonexistent therapeutic indications and implementations for the existing drugs. It is basically recycling of approved, failed or banned drugs for various complex and deadly diseases. Currently, on an average, the cost for conventional de novo discovery and development of a drug is enormous and requires a minimum of 10 years for the drug to reach the market. On the contrary, Drug Repositioning is known to be the fastest and cost effective method of drug discovery. Few sources estimate the average cost of repositioning is cut down to $300mn and takes about 6.5 years to launch in the market. Cancer has been a challenge and a battle to overcome. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) estimated the global cancer burden to be risen to 19.3 million. World is working for the development of new drugs along the timeline of cancer to put patient suffering at ease with less toxic and effective drugs. Repositioning is a proficient way to discover new drugs and is a suitable approach to find remedy for cancer. This paper reviews repositioning of known drugs that display significant anti-cancer activity.

Keywords: Drug repositioning, Anti-HIV, Proton pump inhibitors, Anti-fungal, Anti-diabetics, NSAIDs, Anti-cancer.