Repositioning of Drug - New Indications for Marketed Drugs

This chapter provides the methods and examples in the field of drug repositioning. The computational methods make use of the available large data sets, such as genomic and transcriptomic data, clinical reports, medical literature, and public data resource for protein and compounds, to disclose the potential drug-new indication connections for rational drug repositioning. The computational method is helpful in narrowing down the large protein number involved in a general signal pathway down to a few proteins in the specific disease-oriented signal network and uncovering unknown mechanism of action (MOA). The evolutionary similarity of protein in human genome and parasites genome indicates the possible off-target effects in both sides, and the most efficacious drug repositioning may be achieved by using anti-infective drugs for corresponding targets in human, or the reverse. The off-target effects provide potential drug repositioning opportunities when the addressed targets play a pivotal role in other diseases.