European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

REVERSE PHARMACOLOGY: A SCIENCE REDEFINING DRUG DISCOVERY

Siddhartha Dutta*, Sudeshna Banerjee, Sahil Kumar and Ayush Jain

ABSTRACT

With the increase in diversity and complexity of the diseases there is an ever-growing need of discovery and development of new drugs. Currently, the drug discovery by the conventional process is a pretty expensive and extensive process which has led to decrease in the generation of newer molecules in recent times. In view of such a situation, Reverse Pharmacology(RP) can be an effective alternative approach of drug discovery. In RP the drug discovery takes a reverse path from ‘clinics to laboratory’ rather than classical ‘laboratory to clinics’. The already established medications in the traditional medicines are reevaluated scientifically and the lead compounds are generated which are screened further to develop a molecule which can be taken for clinical trial. RP provides an edge over the traditional drug discovery being a time saving and economical procedure. Indian Government is currently taking many initiatives to promote multidisciplinary approach for healthcare. RP has been practiced for a long time but did not get popularity because of lack of documentation and scientific standardized procedure. But, now with change in scenario and development of molecules utilizing RP, it is gaining popularity and we can hope a change in paradigm in drug discovery in future.

Keywords: Reverse pharmacology; Drug discovery; Traditional medicine; New chemical entity; Pharmaceutical Industry.