Drug Repurposing Approaches to Combating Viral Infections
Abstract
Development of novel antiviral molecules from the beginning costs an average of $350 million to $2 billion per drug, and the journey from the laboratory to the clinic takes about 10-15 years. Utilization of drug repurposing approaches has generated substantial interest in order to overcome these drawbacks. A drastic reduction in the failure rate, which otherwise is ~92%, is achieved with the drug repurposing approach. The recent exploration of the drug repurposing approach to combat the COVID-19 pandemic has further validated the fact that it is more beneficial to reinvestigate the in-practice drugs for a new application instead of designing novel drugs. The first successful example of drug repurposing is zidovudine (AZT), which was developed as an anti-cancer agent in the 1960s and was later approved by the US FDA as an anti-HIV therapeutic drug in the late 1980s after fast track clinical trials. Since that time, the drug repurposing approach has been successfully utilized to develop effective therapeutic strategies against a plethora of diseases. Hence, an extensive application of the drug repurposing approach will not only help to fight the current pandemics more efficiently but also predict and prepare for newly emerging viral infections. In this review, we discuss in detail the drug repurposing approach and its advancements related to viral infections such as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
Read the paper
Related studies
- Validation of Three Early Ejaculation Diagnostic Tools: A Composite Measure Is Accurate and More Adequate for Diagnosis by Updated Diagnostic Criteria
- Functional insights into aberrant brain responses and integration in patients with lifelong premature ejaculation
- Anatomic Basis and Clinical Effect of Selective Dorsal Neurectomy for Patients with Lifelong Premature Ejaculation: A Randomized Controlled Trial
- Classification and definition of premature ejaculation
- The antidepressant Sertraline inhibits CatSper Ca2+ channels in human sperm
- Review—Intracellular Sensors Based on Carbonaceous Nanomaterials: A Review
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.