Published in

American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, Pharmaceutical Research, 8(28), p. 1785-1791

DOI: 10.1007/s11095-011-0486-6

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Finding Promiscuous Old Drugs for New Uses

Journal article published in 2011 by Sean Ekins ORCID, Antony J. Williams ORCID
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Red circle
Published version: archiving forbidden
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

From research published in the last six years we have identified 34 studies that have screened libraries of FDA-approved drugs against various whole cell or target assays. These studies have each identified one or more compounds with a suggested new bioactivity that had not been described previously. We now show that 13 of these drugs were active against more than one additional disease, thereby suggesting a degree of promiscuity. We also show that following compilation of all the studies, 109 molecules were identified by screening in vitro. These molecules appear to be statistically more hydrophobic with a higher molecular weight and AlogP than orphan-designated products with at least one marketing approval for a common disease indication or one marketing approval for a rare disease from the FDA's rare disease research database. Capturing these in vitro data on old drugs for new uses will be important for potential reuse and analysis by others to repurpose or reposition these or other existing drugs. We have created databases which can be searched by the public and envisage that these can be updated as more studies are published.