In Silico Pharmacology and Drug Repurposing Approaches

Abstract

Drug repurposing is an innovative and resourceful approach to expanding access to treatment options by making new uses for medications that are already on the market and in compliance with all applicable regulations. However, finding new protein targets for drugs that are already on the market might be difficult. It is an efficient strategy for discovering and developing new pharmaceutical compounds with desirable pharmacological or therapeutic properties. In recent years, as a result of the discovery of novel biological targets, a number of pharmaceutical companies have started developing new treatments by incorporating the drug repositioning approach into their drug research and development programs. This strategy is highly efficient, quick, cheap, and unlikely to fail. It improves the drug’s chances of success by increasing its therapeutic value. Thus, drug repositioning has proven to be an effective alternate to the conventional drug discovery process. The traditional or de novo techniques of drug development are costly and time-consuming, and they do not always result in the discovery of new molecular entities (NME). Developing and identifying new rational uses for medicinal molecules is the goal of pharmacological repositioning, which combines activity-based, experimental, and in silico computational methods. Thus, to treat rare, difficult-to-treat problems and neglected diseases, a new approach is being developed in which approved medications are redirected based on a viable target molecule.