Abstract

Infectious diseases are an enormous burden to global health, and since drug discovery is costly, those infectious diseases that affect the developing world are often not pursued by commercial drug discovery efforts. Therefore, pragmatic means by which new therapeutics can be discovered are needed. One such approach is target repurposing, where pathogen targets are matched with homologous human targets that have been pursued for drug discovery for other indications. In many cases, the medicinal chemistry, structural biology, and biochemistry knowledge around these human targets can be directly repurposed to launch and accelerate new drug discovery efforts against the pathogen targets. This article describes the overarching strategy of target repurposing as a tool for initiating and prosecuting neglected disease drug discovery programs, highlighting this approach with three case studies.

Notes

Authors' accepted manuscript version. Final published version: Target repurposing for neglected diseases. Michael P Pollastri and Robert K Campbell. Future Medicinal Chemistry 2011 3:10, 1307-1315. DOI 10.4155/fmc.11.92

Supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health (R01 AI082577).

PMCID: PMC3160716

NIHMSID: NIHMS316994

Keywords

neglected diseases, infectious diseases, public health, drug discovery

Disciplines

Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry

Publisher

Future Science

Publication Date

8-1-2011

Rights Information

© 2012 Future Science

Rights Holder

Future Science


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