Reverse pharmacology and drug repositioning in drug discovery

Abstract

Drug discovery is a tedious process that takes a long time and high cost, while reverse pharmacology is a target-based procedure, which depends mainly on identifying the molecular target. Reverse Pharmacology is a paradigm shift that augments the collaboration between modern advanced sciences with traditional medicine and modern biomedicine to provide better and safer leads, it is an approach that deals with transferring documented observational achievement into successful models. For this reason, reverse pharmacology is now a tool for drug discovery from synthetic and natural products. Drug repositioning is the new use for an old approved drug, that may be marketed for the treatment of certain diseases. Drug repositioning can be a tool for drug discovery that can save time and money if it is based on reliable clinical observations which are then combined with the computational tools in order to obtain the required results at an appropriate time. In this chapter, we will have an overview of the concepts of reverse pharmacology and drug repositioning and their applications in drug discovery.