Streamlining the Drug Discovery Process through Repurposing of Clinically Approved Drugs

Editorial

Austin J Biotechnol Bioeng. 2015;2(3): 1047.

Streamlining the Drug Discovery Process through Repurposing of Clinically Approved Drugs

Arnish Chakraborty and Vishal Trivedi*

Department of Biosciences & Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology-Guwahati, India

*Corresponding author: Vishal Trivedi, Malaria Research Group, Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology-Guwahati, Guwahati-781039, Assam, India

Received: July 20, 2015; Accepted: July 22, 2015; Published: July 24, 2015

Editorial

Drug repurposing (also known as Drug repositioning) is an approach to drug design and development where known compounds are assigned to new indications. In this process one starts from already existing clinical drugs and assigns a new therapeutic target to the molecule. This approach is quickly gaining popularity both in industry as well as in academia as it banks upon the initial knowledge and investment which brought the drug to the market at the first instance. The major bottleneck of de novo drug development is that almost 90% of the identified novel molecules fail the clinical trials, resulting in the rise of the overall pharmaceutical R&D cost. The repurposing strategy helps to overcome such barriers. There are notable advantages of this approach over the traditional drug discovery process (Figure 1). Firstly, the repurposed drugs have already undergone clinical trials in the past and as a result their safety is ensured. Secondly, the repurposing strategy is cheap and takes much lesser time to develop a drug. Several pharmaceutical companies therefore endorse this low-risk repositioning strategy to improve their profits.

Citation: Chakraborty A and Trivedi V. Streamlining the Drug Discovery Process through Repurposing of Clinically Approved Drugs. Austin J Biotechnol Bioeng. 2015;2(3): 1047. ISSN: 2378-3036