Repurposing of Drugs
Developing a brand-new drug takes an enormous amount of time, money and effort, mainly due to bottlenecks in the therapeutic development process. The translation of a promising and new molecule into an approved drug often takes over 15 years. It is crucial to advance strategies to reduce this time frame, decrease costs and improve success rates.
Drug repurposing or repurposing is one such strategy. Repositioning success stories and companies leveraging repositioning strategies are increasing in number such as .
Development risk is reduced because repositioning candidates have often been through several stages of clinical development and therefore have well-known safety and pharmacokinetic profiles. Shorter routes to the clinic are also possible because in vitro and in vivo screening, chemical optimization, toxicology, manufacturing, formulation development and even early clinical development have, in many cases, already been completed and can therefore be bypassed. Because of these factors, substantial risks and costs are decreased and new repositioning drugs could be ready for clinical trials quickly, speeding their review by the regulatory agencies and, approval and use.
So where do the ideas for repositioning come from? Ideas for repositioning can come from serendipitous observations when a physician observes a potential new use of the drug he is using; from novel, informed insights when a physician or researcher is looking for a known drug with a mechanism of action to suit the disease specific pathophysiology; or from technology platforms established to identify repositioning opportunities.
The Clalit is the perfect platform for this kind of discoveries and validation of these drug candidates. Actually, Mor Research offers a vast range of projects in the repositioning fields, several after in vivo validation and several following phase II clinical validation:
- Minocycline for the treatment of schizophrenia. Completed phase IIa clinical trial.
- Activated Protein C (APC) for the treatment of Acute Macular Degeneration. Completed in vitro and in vivo studies.
- Ace Inhibitors for the treatment of osteoarthritis. Completed in vitro and in vivo studies.
- Rotavirus vaccine during pregnancy for the prevention of type I diabetes. Trial ongoing.
- Growth factor for the prevention of diabetes type I.
For further information regarding licensing opportunities please contact Dr Sari Prutchi Sagiv at sari@mor-research.com
