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Updated: Sep 27, 2025
05:10
Drug Repurposing Hypothesis Generation Using the "RE:fine Drugs" System
Published on: December 11, 2016
9.8K
Repurposing drugs targeting epidemic viruses.
Vigneshwaran Namasivayam1, Senthikumar Palaniappan2, Murugesan Vanangamudi3
1Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Institute, University of Bonn, 53121 Bonn, Germany.
Drug Discovery Today
|April 15, 2022
Summary
Drug repurposing offers a fast, cost-effective strategy to find new antiviral drugs for epidemic infections. This review details repurposed drug candidates and their effectiveness against viral diseases.
Area of Science:
- Virology
- Infectious Diseases
- Drug Discovery
Background:
- Emerging and re-emerging epidemic infections pose significant global health challenges.
- Developing novel broad-spectrum antivirals is hindered by time, cost, and drug resistance.
- Existing antiviral development pipelines face limitations in speed and efficiency.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review antiviral drug candidates identified through drug repurposing.
- To explore the potential mechanisms of action for these repurposed drugs.
- To summarize their biological responses against various epidemic viral infectious diseases.
Main Methods:
- Literature review of studies employing drug repurposing for antiviral discovery.
- Analysis of identified drug candidates, their targets, and mechanisms.
- Compilation of data on efficacy against different viral pathogens.
Main Results:
- Drug repurposing has successfully identified several potent antiviral agents.
- Repurposed drugs exhibit diverse modes of action against viral replication.
- These candidates show promise against a range of epidemic viral infections.
Conclusions:
- Drug repurposing is a viable and accelerated strategy for discovering new antiviral therapies.
- This approach can significantly reduce development timelines and costs.
- Further investigation into repurposed antivirals is warranted for combating viral epidemics.
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