Drug Repurposing

A reader has sent along the question: "Have any repurposed drugs actually been approved for their new indication?" And initially, I thought, confidently but rather blankly, "Well, certainly, there's. . . and. . .hmm", but then the biggest example hit me: thalidomide. It was, infamously, a sedative and remedy for morning sickness in its original tragic incarnation, but came back into use first for leprosy and then for multiple myeloma. The discovery of its efficacy in leprosy, specifically erythema nodosum laprosum, was a complete and total accident, it should be noted - the story is told in the book Dark Remedy. A physician gave a suffering leprosy patient the only sedative in the hospital's pharmacy that hadn't been tried, and it had a dramatic and unexpected effect on their condition. That's an example of a total repurposing - a drug that had actually been approved and abandoned (and how) coming back to treat something else. At the other end of the spectrum, you have the normal sort of market expansion that many drugs undergo: kinase inhibitor Insolunib is approved for Cancer X, then later on for Cancer Y, then for Cancer Z. (As a side note, I would almost feel like working for free for a company that would actually propose "insolunib" as a generic name. My mortgage banker might not see things the same way, though). At any rate, that sort of thing doesn't really count as repurposing, in my book - you're using the same effect that the compound was developed for and finding ...
Source: In the Pipeline - Category: Chemists Tags: Clinical Trials Source Type: blogs