Understanding Drug Repurposing From the Perspective of Biomedical Entities and Their Evolution: Bibliographic...

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Informatics
• Pharmacology
• Bibliometrics

Background:

• Drug development is costly and time-consuming with low success rates.
• Drug repurposing (DR) offers advantages in development time, cost, and safety.
• Entitymetrics, bibliometric indicators of biomedical entities, measure knowledge evolution in drug research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To understand drug repurposing (DR) through the lens of biomedical entities (diseases, drugs, genes) and their evolution.
• To investigate the driving factors behind DR at the entity level.

Main Methods:

• Extended bibliometric indicators (entitymetrics) from PubMed to identify patterns in drug research phases.
• Proposed four entitymetric measures: Popularity Index (P1), Promising Index (P2), Prestige Index (P3), and Collaboration Index (CI).
• Utilized aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) as a case study for repurposing analysis.

Main Results:

• The maxima of P1, P3, and CI correlate with different aspirin repurposing phases.
• Entitymetrics revealed interactions between biomedical entities and drugs during DR.
• P1 and CI track long-term trends, P2 detects immediate changes, and P3 indicates early practical value and research frontiers.

Conclusions:

• Key drivers for DR include in-depth studies of side effects/mechanisms, market competition, and advanced life science technologies.
• Entitymetrics provide a valuable approach for examining DR evolution.
• This methodology can enhance decision-making in drug discovery and development.