Scientists are reporting on a technique for repurposing existing medicines. A new development allows researchers to determine if an already-approved drug might be used to treat a different disease. This system could reduce drug development costs and allow for faster drug availability to patients, according to the report published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.
Sivanesan Dakshanamurthy and colleagues note that scientists are aware that drugs already approved for 1 disease might be effective for others. However, existing methods to identify new uses for old drugs lack accuracy. So Dakshanamurthy’s team created a comprehensive new computer method called “Train-Match-Fit-Streamline” (TMFS) that uses 11 components to quickly pair diseases with possible drug treatments.
According to the researchers, TMFS assisted with the discovery that Celebrex has a chemical signature and architecture indicating that it may work against a difficult-to-treat form of cancer. Similarly, the TMFS method recommended repurposing a medicine for hookworm in order to cut off the blood supply that feeds many forms of cancer and allows the disease to grow and spread.
“We anticipate that expanding our TMFS method to the more than 27,000 clinically active agents available worldwide across all targets will be most useful in the repositioning of existing drugs for new therapeutic targets,” they said.
Source: ACS.