Toward better drug repositioning: prioritizing and integrating existing methods into efficient pipelines

Area of Science:

• Pharmacology
• Drug Discovery
• Computational Biology

Background:

• Drug repositioning is a significant approach in pharmaceutical research, accounting for about 30% of recent US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs.
• The increasing interest in drug repositioning has spurred the development of numerous computational methods for identifying new therapeutic applications of existing drugs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide guidance on selecting and integrating computational methods for drug repositioning pipelines.
• To assist researchers in customizing and optimizing drug repositioning strategies for specific applications.

Main Methods:

• Evaluation of biological and pharmaceutical knowledge.
• Analysis of elucidated drug mechanisms-of-action.
• Prioritization and integration frameworks for computational methods.

Main Results:

• A structured approach to method selection for drug repositioning pipelines.
• Insights into optimizing computational tools for diverse drug repositioning tasks.

Conclusions:

• Effective drug repositioning requires a deep understanding of drug mechanisms and available computational tools.
• This guidance facilitates the development of efficient and tailored drug repositioning pipelines.