IMPORTANCE OF DRUG REPOSITIONING FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF INNOVATIVE THERAPIES FOR TROPICAL DISEASES

ALAN TALEVI; BELLERA C; SBARAGLINI ML; ALBERCA, LUCAS N; BALCAZAR DE; FRACCAROLI L; VANRREL MC; CASASSA F; LABRIOLA C; CATALINA ALBA SOTO; ROMANO P; CARRILLO C

Jornada; Jornada de la Sociedad Argentina de Protozoología; 2015

The term ?drug repositioning? refers to the identification of second or further medical uses for known drugs, including approved, experimental, abandoned and discontinued ones. It is an efficient approach from the translational viewpoint: repositioned drugs required relatively low resource investment compared to de novo drugs, since usually a number of preclinical and clinical studies can be bypassed when investigating second medical uses, as they been done previously when studying the original therapeutic indication. Furthermore, the probability of surviving clinical trials is substantially higher for repurposed drug candidates than for novel ones. International organizations, including the US NIH, have recently launched funding programs to foster public-private consortiums oriented to drug repositioning. The approach could have a prominent role in the development of innovative treatments for rare and neglected diseases, including tropical parasitic diseases. In fact, most of the drugs for such conditions currently going through clinical trials are repositioned drugs.Here we will briefly describe different rational approaches to drug repositioning, with an emphasis on computer-guided approaches, and we will present some results from our research network using this strategy in the search of novel therapeutics for trypanosomatid infections, including cruzipain inhibitors and polyamine analogs.