European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

DRUG REPURPOSING: A NEW ERA OF CANCER THERAPY USING TRADITIONAL DRUGS

Usama Farghaly Aly*, Hager Khalf Mahmoud and Hiba Akram Al Saad

ABSTRACT

Drug repositioning has gained popularity as a strategy for finding new uses for available, commercially available, or unapproved medications to treat a targeted ailment. Due to the original drug’s easily available efficacy and safety profile and regulatory bodies’ approval, drug repositioning lowers overall development costs and risk assessment. One of these fields is drug repurposing, which is used in cancer. Cancer is a disease of altered signaling and metabolism, causing uncontrolled division and survival of transformed cells. One of the traditional drugs is disulfiram, which is usually used as an alcoholic-aversive agent. Recent cancer research showed that it can be used in non-small-cell lung cancer by oxidative stress by yielding reactive oxygen species. Another example is gemcitabine, which is used as an antiviral now, and by drug repurposing, it can be used as an antipancreatic cancer drug. Other drugs such as glipizide, interferon, nelfinavir, niclosamide, warfarin, thalidomide, auranofin, ferroquine, celecoxib, sildenafil, digoxin, valproic acid, statins, itraconazole, and retinoic acid will be mentioned later.

Keywords: Drug repurposing, cancer, Warfarin, Gipizide, Thalidomide.