Drug repurposing for COVID-19: Approaches, challenges and promising candidates.
Pharmacol Ther
; 228: 107930, 2021 12.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1281524
ABSTRACT
Traditional drug development and discovery has not kept pace with threats from emerging and re-emerging diseases such as Ebola virus, MERS-CoV and more recently, SARS-CoV-2. Among other reasons, the exorbitant costs, high attrition rate and extensive periods of time from research to market approval are the primary contributing factors to the lag in recent traditional drug developmental activities. Due to these reasons, drug developers are starting to consider drug repurposing (or repositioning) as a viable alternative to the more traditional drug development process. Drug repurposing aims to find alternative uses of an approved or investigational drug outside of its original indication. The key advantages of this approach are that there is less developmental risk, and it is less time-consuming since the safety and pharmacological profile of the repurposed drug is already established. To that end, various approaches to drug repurposing are employed. Computational approaches make use of machine learning and algorithms to model disease and drug interaction, while experimental approaches involve a more traditional wet-lab experiments. This review would discuss in detail various ongoing drug repurposing strategies and approaches to combat the current COVID-19 pandemic, along with the advantages and the potential challenges.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Drug Repositioning
/
Pandemics
/
COVID-19
/
COVID-19 Drug Treatment
Type of study:
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Pharmacol Ther
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
J.pharmthera.2021.107930
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