Old Drug, New Opportunity: Drug Repurposing in Cardiovascular Diseases

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the major burden on global health. However, the development and approval of novel CVD therapeutics have declined, largely due to their protracted timelines and prohibitive costs. Drug repurposing has emerged as a promising strategy to overcome these limitations by leveraging data from approved drugs, thereby reducing both developmental costs and time-to-application. In this review, we systematically evaluate the repurposing potential of currently available drugs for CVD, elucidating their potential mechanisms, efficacy, and safety profiles. Furthermore, we discuss methodologies that facilitate the identification of promising repurposing candidates. These approaches may yield safer, more efficacious, and cost-effective alternatives for CVD, bridging the gap between clinical needs and drug development pipelines. We also address the translational and commercial barriers specific to CVD drug repurposing and propose that integrating precision medicine, artificial intelligence driven discovery, and collaborative frameworks represents a viable strategy to overcome these hurdles.