Drug Repurposing for Cancers With Limited Survival: Protocol for a Retrospective Cohort Study

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Pharmacology
• Biostatistics

Background:

• Drug discovery in oncology is lengthy and costly, with low success rates for new molecular entities.
• Drug repurposing and the use of secondary clinical data offer potential cost and time efficiencies.
• Advances in health informatics enable secondary data to rival primary data quality.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify existing marketed drugs that may improve prognosis in cancer patients.
• To explore the potential of drug repurposing for novel cancer therapies.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective cohort study of high-lethality cancer patients (2006-2012) in Catalonia, monitoring 5-year survival.
• Comparison of drug consumption between long-term survivors and non-survivors.
• Multivariate analyses and a control cohort used to validate findings.

Main Results:

• Anticipated discovery of significant associations between common drugs and cancer patient survival outcomes.
• Expected initial results publication in the first half of 2024.

Conclusions:

• The study may identify commonly used drugs as candidates for repurposing in cancer treatment.
• Results are exploratory and require confirmation via clinical trials.
• This research could expedite the drug discovery process in oncology.