DistilBio Blog – Talking about Life Sciences Search

A very interesting and new approach adopted by Pharma companies is Drug re-purposing or re-positioning. Drug re-purposing is the use of already approved drug for disease indications that they were not initially developed to combat. This means that the drugs have already been through extensive toxicity tests and clinical trials, and failure due to adverse toxicology is reduced.

The most famous example of drug repurposing is of Sildenafil (Viagra), developed by Pfizer. Initially developed as a treatment for high blood pressure, which failed, but its side effect led to a new line of therapy (1).

Drugs, though intended to bind to a single target, generally bind to its primary target and several other proteins that could either lead to its efficacy or side-effects. Looking at these secondary targets will be interesting and probable targets for other disease areas.

As an example, I have selected the drug Rabeprazole, an anti-ulcer drug. Now lets see if Rabeprazole, an approved drug, can be re-purposed for any other disease area.

The first query is for Rabeprazole and the disease areas associated with it.

Query: Rabeprazole > disease                          Run Query

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