Overcoming Drug Development Bottlenecks With Repurposing: Old drugs learn new tricks

The development of new therapies is an arduous, time-consuming and costly task. Furthermore, the development of many compounds runs into issues related to safety. Drug repurposing, where drugs with established safety in humans are tested and developed for efficacy in a disease other than the one for which they were developed, is gaining traction because of its potential to overcome an initial bottleneck in the drug development process. In “Bedside to Bench,” Stephen Strittmatter discusses the types of scenario in which drug repurposing may be of benefit, such as when a drug is repurposed for a new molecular target or for the same target in a different disease. In “Bench to Bedside,” Michael Pollak focuses on a recent study that suggest that biguanides that are normally used in the treatment of diabetes could have direct cyotoxic action on cancer cells with mutations in respiratory complex I. The pharmacokinetic hurdles that may need to be overcome for this to be translated to the clinic are also discussed.