Drug repositioning for personalized medicine

Area of Science:

• Genomics and Molecular Biology
• Pharmacology and Drug Discovery
• Personalized Medicine

Background:

• Human diseases arise from complex molecular mechanisms involving protein and pathway aberrations.
• Genomic advancements enable personalized molecular disease understanding.
• Existing approved drugs offer a faster route for new therapeutic indications through repositioning.

Purpose of the Study:

• To discuss the current research landscape of personalized medicine and drug repositioning.
• To highlight systematic approaches for identifying drug repositioning candidates.
• To explore the potential of personalized drug repositioning for rare diseases and specific mutations.

Main Methods:

• Review of current research in personalized medicine and drug repositioning.
• Focus on large-scale efforts to identify drug repositioning candidates.
• Analysis of systematic approaches to elucidate individual disease mechanisms, particularly in cancer.

Main Results:

• Personalized medicine and drug repositioning enhance drug discovery pipelines, reducing time and cost.
• These strategies address the high failure rates of new drugs in clinical trials due to efficacy or toxicity.
• Systematic efforts are underway to identify repositioning candidates and understand individual disease mechanisms.

Conclusions:

• Personalized drug repositioning is particularly beneficial for rare diseases or those with specific mutations.
• Challenges in personalized drug repositioning need to be addressed for wider adoption.
• These integrated approaches are set to transform disease diagnosis, treatment inference, and drug development, especially for rare cancer subtypes.