Drug Repurposing Using FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) Database.

Area of Science:

• Pharmacology
• Drug Discovery
• Computational Biology

Background:

• Drug repurposing offers a cost-effective strategy for identifying novel therapeutic indications for pre-approved drugs.
• The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) contains extensive drug safety data, crucial for evaluating potential new drug uses.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review common drug repurposing strategies utilizing FAERS data.
• To highlight successful applications of FAERS-based drug repurposing in the literature.

Main Methods:

• Inverse signal detection for single diseases.
• Analysis of drug-drug interactions to mitigate adverse drug events (ADEs).
• Identification of drug-ADE pairs based on opposing gene perturbation signatures.
• Identification of drug-drug pairs based on congruent gene perturbation signatures.

Main Results:

• FAERS provides a rich source for drug repurposing signals.
• Multiple strategies exist for leveraging FAERS data to uncover new therapeutic applications.
• Successful examples demonstrate the viability of FAERS-based drug repurposing.

Conclusions:

• FAERS-based drug repurposing is a promising strategy for discovering new uses for existing therapies.
• The expanding volume of FAERS data enhances the potential for novel drug discovery.
• This approach accelerates the development pipeline by utilizing established drug safety profiles.