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Drug repurposing involves the application of clinically-approved drugs for a purpose other than their intended use. Drugs are developed for a wide range of human diseases, from cancer to diabetes, to malaria and viral infections. Often, the mechanism of the drug action can be effective against more than one disease. Due to the long duration and high costs associated with developing new drugs, repurposing represents a low-hanging fruit to accelerate the discovery of new treatment and drive clinical impact. It is additionally attractive, because often the drugs are already well characterised, with known biochemical and safety profiles.

At the CIRTM, we are using high-throughput technologies to study libraries of small molecules with the potential to treat both non-infectious and infectious diseases. These include pathogens that are resistant to some currently used antibiotics, or those that require complex combination therapies. We utilise a multidisciplinary approach to understand how the repurposed drugs work in the context of a new disease, including computational methods to simulate drug-target interactions, and zebrafish models of efficacy.

Academics working in Drug Repurposing for Clinical Translation research theme:

• Dr Sam Willcocks