The application of old drugs to molecular design
Zongru Guo · Zhongguo yaowu huaxue zazhi · 2010
Side effect of drugs is due to the interaction of a drug with off-target,which originates from the promiscuity of both receptors and drugs.Drug promiscuity possesses duality:the advantageous aspect is used to design and innovate multi-target drugs;the disadvantage displays side effects of drugs.The side effects,however,can be also exploited to investigate new drugs by modification of the drug structure to get rid of original pharmacological action and increase one of side effects.As a starting point,an old drug possesses a series of merits:clinical trail and application have convey the drugs to reasonable and qualified safety,pharmaceutical and pharmacokinetic properties.Meanwhile,many validated new targets provide prerequisite for mining old drugs.The probability of success of this strategy might be higher than conventional methods of high throughput screening and rational drug design.One of the important issues in modifying old drugs is to ensure structural novelty and intellectual property.