Importance of drug repositioning for the development of innovative therapies for tropical diseases

TALEVI A; BELLERA CL; SBARAGLINI ML; ALBERCA L; BALCAZAR DE; FRACCAROLI L; VANRELL MC; CASASSA AF; LABRIOLA CA; ALBA SOTO CD; ROMANO PS; CARRILLO C

Buenos Aires

Congreso; Mesa redonda. XXVII Reunión Anual SAP; 2015

SAP

The term ?drug repositioning? refers to the identification of second or further medicaluses for known drugs, including approved, experimental, abandoned and discontinuedones. It is an efficient approach from the translational viewpoint: repositioned drugsrequired relatively low resource investment compared to de novo drugs, since usually anumber of preclinical and clinical studies can be bypassed when investigating secondmedical uses, as they been done previously when studying the original therapeuticindication. Furthermore, the probability of surviving clinical trials is substantiallyhigher for repurposed drug candidates than for novel ones. International organizations,including the US NIH, have recently launched funding programs to foster public-privateconsortiums oriented to drug repositioning. The approach could have a prominent rolein the development of innovative treatments for rare and neglected diseases, includingtropical parasitic diseases. In fact, most of the drugs for such conditions currently goingthrough clinical trials are repositioned drugs.Here we will briefly describe different rational approaches to drug repositioning, withan emphasis on computer-guided approaches, and we will present some results from ourresearch network using this strategy in the search of novel therapeutics fortrypanosomatid infections, including cruzipain inhibitors and polyamine analogs.