This is a brief summary of the past 8 months’ discussion highlights in our discussion group, “Drug Repurposing-Reprofiling-Repositioning.” If you want to learn about the details, join our 383 members!
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December 2011 — Group members Lun Yang and Pankaj Agarwal have a paper in PLoS One: “Systematic Drug Repositioning Based on Clinical Side-Effects“
January 2012 — The group discusses a blog post of group member Kunan Igale, “How useful are modeled protein structures?, and a paper by group member Tudor Oprea (University of New Mexico School of Medicine) in Drug Discovery Today: Therapeutic Strategies, “Drug Repurposing from an Academic Perspective.” – Tudor Oprea starts a poll, “What do you think is the best ‘home’ for drug repurposing activities, with the long-term goal of having an approved drug – academia, small company, Big Pharma, joint venture, or government?” – H.M. Pharma Consultancy announces its first blog post dedicated to drug repurposing patent applications. Nine more posts of these type, each reviewing 3-5 documents, follow until the end of July 2012.
February 2012 – Bexarotene clears amyloid plaques in ApoE mutant mice (Science); ezetimibe blocks hepatitis C virus entry into cells (Nature Medicine), drug effect prediction by polypharmacology-based interaction profiling(J. Chem. Inf. Model.); and group member Bruce Bloom’s Partnership for Cures (a non-profit focused on drug and device repurposing) are the hottest topics of the month.- PloS Computational Biology has a paper on using semantic linked data for drug repurposing.
March 2012 – If one opens an IND for an orphan indication with a particular dosage form could anybody open another IND for the same indication with another dosage form? – Example of successful drug repurposing? – Predicting new molecular targets for rhein using network pharmacology (BMC Systems Biology). – The partnership between NIH’s newly established National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and Eli Lilly Research Laboratories (press release).
April 2012 – The case of Lucentis(TM) vs Avastin(TM) in wet AMD carries on in the UK. – Group member David Cavalla writes on the Numedicus blog about surprising facts about Biogen-Idec’s BG-12 for multiple sclerosis. – Arrowhead announce the 2nd Annual Drug Repositioning Conference (October 23-24, 2012 in San Francisco); Terrapinn announces its World Drug Repositioning Congress (September 11-13, 2012 in London).
May 2012 – The Discovering New Therapeutic Uses for Existing Molecules initiative launches, and will give scientists access to select compounds from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Eli Lilly. – Group member Feixion Cheng et al. have a paper in PLoS Computational Biology, “Prediction of Drug-Target Interactions and Drug Repositioning via Network-Based Inference.” – A review in Drug Discovery Today summarizes evidence and rationale for developing the old anti-alcoholic drug Antabuse (disulfiram) for breast cancer. – A long and productive discussion erupts around posts by Aris and Andreas Persidis, “The fascination with failed compounds” and “Drug repositioning – latest fad or here to stay?”
June 2012 – Whom to sell a drug repurposing project? – Metformin synergistic with standard therapy in pancreatic carcinoma. – Europe’s CHMP recommends approval of repurposed glycopyrrolate for COPD.
July 2012 – Pfizer’s modestly successful anti-HIV drug Selzentry(TM) (maraviroc) might have potential in bone marrow transplantation.