Drug Repositioning: Current Challenges and Future Perspectives of a Sustainable Experimental and In Silico Approach
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Pharmacology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 August 2024
Special Issue Editors
Interests: ER stress; apoptosis; autophagy; proteasome inhibition; liver cancer; cell culture; biochemistry; proteomics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: Protease
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We recently accepted the invitation to serve as Guest Editors for the new Special Issue of the journal International Journal of Molecular Sciences on the subject of “Drug Repositioning: Current Challenges and Future Perspectives of a Sustainable Experimental and In Silico Approach”.
There is a continuous need for new drugs to help improve quality of life, to treat orphan and incurable diseases, or to overcome drug resistance. Traditional drug discovery and development is a long, expensive, and complex process that takes on average around 10–15 years, during which pharmaceutical companies invest around USD 1–2 billion for each new drug to be approved for clinical use. This process involves several phases: the identification of potential targets that a drug could act on, a preclinical phase during which potential drugs are tested in cellular and animal models, human clinical trials, and eventually regulatory approval. In the era of big data, with current advances in the landscape of high-dimensional multiomics and artificial intelligence, a promising approach to reduce the time (by 3–5 years) and costs (by about USD 0.3 billion) of pharmaceutical research is, therefore, the use of reconverted drugs, a strategy that allows the identification of new therapeutic uses for drugs already approved or in the clinical research phase (investigational drugs). Many widespread pathologies, such as cancer and neurodegeneration, are extremely complex and heterogeneous, and targeting a single target is often ineffectiveTherefore, the search for combinatorial therapies through the reuse of drugs may represent the key for obtaining superior therapeutic results. It is necessary to highlight the importance of a complete, reliable, and predictive molecular-scale evaluation so that only the most effective therapeutic approaches, even in combination, are then actually tested in phase II or III studies, avoiding the use of time and resources on potentially unsuccessful and unnecessary clinical trials. The development of adequate innovative preclinical models of pathology (e.g., 3D organoids) is not of less importance, and it can more closely reproduce the substrate of action of the molecules to be tested, allowing for a more accurate preclinical evaluation. Ultimately, considering that the current cost of testing new drugs is unsustainable, especially in light of the fact that the benefits of these new therapies are, at best, minimal, the urgent need for less expensive alternatives such as drug reuse is highlighted.
This Special Issue aims to collect the most innovative and promising research studies, both experimental and computational, to provide cutting-edge insights to all who are interested in this area of research, emphasizing the sustainability of this approach for the identification of old–new drugs.
“The most fruitful way to discover a new drug is to start with an old drug.”-James Black.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Maria Francesca Armentano
Dr. Rocchina Miglionico
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Molecular Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
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Keywords
- drug discovery
- drug repositioning
- biologics
- small molecules
- artificial intelligence (AI)
- cancer
- neurodegenerative diseases
- therapeutic strategies
