Given the high attrition rates, substantial costs and slow pace of new drug discovery and development, repurposing of 'old&' drugs to treat both common and rare diseases is increasingly becoming an attractive proposition because it involves the use of de-risked compounds, with potentially lower overall development costs and shorter development timelines. Various data-driven and experimental approaches have been suggested for the identification of repurposable drug candidates [1]

Drug repurposing (DR) or drug repositioning involves identification of new therapeutic use(s) for old/existing/available. This is the process of uncovering new indications of the approved or failed/abandoned compounds for use in a different disease. This process involves a strategy to identify advanced uses for preapproved drugs or existing medications. The basic idea of repurposing is to discover new useful activity for a distinct malady in an older clinically used drug or one that failed in later stages of development [2]. This has emerged as an effective strategy in discovering or developing drug molecules with new pharmacological/therapeutic indications [3].

• Highly efficient, time saving, low-cost and minimum risk of failure.
• Maximizes the therapeutic value of a drug increasing the success rate.
• Utilizes the combined efforts of activity-based or experimental and in silico-based or computational approaches on a rational basis.
• Believed to be an emerging strategy where existing medicines, having already been tested safe in humans, are redirected based on a valid target molecule to combat particularly, rare, difficult-to-treat diseases and neglected diseases.

ON-TARGET AND OFF-TARGET STRATEGIES OF DRUG REPOSITIONING

METHODOLOGIES AND STEPS INVOLVED IN DRUG REPOSITIONING [4]

Repurposing existing drugs can help find outbreak treatments against the clock. We at DRF have a unique and extensive repertoire of in vitro and in vivo functional screening assays in multiple therapeutic areas such as Oncology, Immunity, inflammation, metabolic disorders, dermatology, covid etc.

This can be efficiently utilized for the objective of drug repurposing based on following key points:

• Expertise in target-based screening to explore new possible indications for existing drugs.
• Vast experience in providing services for pipeline extension for drugs.
• Skillset and infrastructure that offers end to end services comprising assistance and support of partners for pipeline extension of drugs for new therapeutic areas.
• Experience of handling approximately 100+ targets.
• Validated functional assays for various therapeutic areas that will cater to the purpose of repurposing.