Drug Repositioning for Effective Prostate Cancer Treatment

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Pharmacology
• Drug Discovery

Background:

• Conventional chemotherapy causes severe adverse effects, reducing cancer patient quality of life.
• Drug repositioning offers a promising strategy to find non-cancer drugs with anti-cancer activity and better safety profiles.
• Identifying repurposed drugs can complement traditional drug discovery, potentially reducing time and cost.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review drug repositioning strategies for identifying anti-cancer agents.
• To present repurposed drug candidates, particularly for prostate cancer (PCa) treatment.
• To summarize the anti-cancer mechanisms and therapeutic potential of repurposed drugs.

Main Methods:

• Literature review of drug repositioning strategies and identified candidates.
• Compilation of 25 repurposed drug candidates based on various discovery approaches.
• Analysis of clinical investigation status and approved repurposed drugs for PCa.

Main Results:

• Fifteen repurposed drug candidates are under clinical investigation for prostate cancer (PCa).
• Zoledronic acid is the sole repurposed, approved non-cancer drug for PCa.
• Identified drugs target diverse mechanisms including mTOR, VEGFR2, PI3K/Akt, COX, NF-κB, Wnt/β-Catenin, DNMT1, and GSK-3β pathways.

Conclusions:

• Drug repositioning is an efficient strategy for discovering novel anti-cancer therapeutics.
• Repurposed drugs offer potential for both monotherapy and combination therapy to improve efficacy and reduce toxicity.
• This approach represents a significant advancement in time- and cost-efficient drug discovery for cancer treatment.