Discovery Technologies for Drug Repurposing
Naiem Tony Issa, Stephen W. Byers, Sivanesan Dakshanamurthy · Methods and principles in medicinal chemistry · 2017
This chapter discusses phenotypic and target-based screening methods followed by in silico computational approaches that are driving contemporary drug repurposing efforts. It also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of phenotypic screening models in drug discovery and repurposing. Although drug repurposing is a cost-effective alternative to de novo drug discovery, high-throughput screening (HTS) methods still pose many challenges such as resource availability and model validity. In silico methods have been adopted to address these. In silico methods are diverse and utilize data spanning low-level biochemical assays to high-level semantic data retrieved from literature text mining and actual patient data within electronic medical records (EMRs). Network analysis provides system level analytics where associations across various modalities accurately predict biological outcomes. The chapter then provides an overview of the latest in silico methods and network analyses being applied for drug repurposing.