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Target repurposing for neglected diseases

† Author for correspondence

Northeastern University, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Hurtig 102, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

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Email the corresponding author at m.pollastri@neu.edu

Robert K Campbell

The Josephine Bay Paul Center in Molecular Biology and Evolution, The Marine Biological Laboratory, 7 MBL Street, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA

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Published Online:22 Aug 2011https://doi.org/10.4155/fmc.11.92

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Abstract

Infectious diseases are an enormous burden to global health and ,since drug discovery is costly, those infectious diseases that affect the developing world are often not pursued by commercial drug-discovery efforts. Therefore, pragmatic means by which new therapeutics can be discovered are needed. One such approach is target repurposing, where pathogen targets are matched with homologous human targets that have been pursued for drug discovery for other indications. In many cases, the medicinal chemistry, structural biology and biochemistry knowledge around these human targets can be directly repurposed to launch and accelerate new drug-discovery efforts against the pathogen targets. This article describes the overarching strategy of target repurposing as a tool for initiating and prosecuting neglected disease drug-discovery programs, highlighting this approach with three case studies.

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Published online 22 August 2011

Published in print August 2011

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Financial & competing interests disclosure

Support from the National Institutes of Health (R01 AI082577) is gratefully acknowledged. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

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