Editorial: Biological aspects of targeted drug discovery: Development of novel targets and/or chemotherapies, and drug repurposing
Rajkumar Singh Kalra, Sandeep Singh, Anjana Munshi, Jitender B. Bariwal · Frontiers in Oncology · 2022
Biological aspects of targeted drug discovery: Development of novel targets and/or chemotherapies, and drug repurposing Cancer drug discovery is a competitive research area in interventional cancer research.It comprises elements of biology and chemistry for developing novel drugs/ small molecules demonstrating potent anti-cancer efficacy (1).Enormous efforts across laboratories and pharmaceutical industries worldwide identify thousands of such molecules annually, however, only a few reach the clinical testing stage (2).It reflects a high failure rate for several reasons that include (yet may not be limited to) drug efficacy, physiological effects, associated side effects, and drug toxicity to normal cells (3).Targeted drug discovery approaches advanced the development of refined drugs/molecules with high therapeutic potential, yet again the success rate remains limited (4).Investigation into the drugs that are approved to cure certain diseases/conditions at times were unexpectedly seen to provide benefits from unintended side effects (5).Availability of the safety, pharmacokinetic, and manufacturing data of licensed drugs/molecules enables researchers to extract/concentrate and investigate their 'unintended' beneficial effects, avoiding a longer procedure of preclinical and clinical trials for safety evaluation (6, 7).Above practice in drug designing and discovery is generally called 'drug repurposing' or 'drug repositioning' (8).Given the availability of relevant safety data that skips time and funding, drug repurposing offers opportunities for researchers to evaluate their anticancer and preventive efficacies against routine chemotherapeutic drugs/therapies (9).