Drug repositioning

Abstract Rapid advances in pharmacotherapy and bioinformatics has led to the discovery and growing popularity of drug repositioning which includes re-investigating or recycling of existing drugs for new indications. There are innumerable advantages as well as challenges of drug repositioning. Since de-novo drug discovery takes plenty of time, effort and money, it has proved to a preferred alternative strategy for accelerated drug discovery. Moreover it is relatively inexpensive and carries minimal risk due to availability of previous pharmacological, safety and toxicology data. The strategies used are Known drug – new target/Drug focus/Drug-centric, Known target- new indication/Target focus/Target-centric and Disease focus/Disease-centric. Drug repositioning is a new breakthrough strategy to benefit patients by offering safer and effective treatment using shelved drugs.