Drug Repurposing in Cancer

The discovery of drug compounds has a long history in drug repurposing, notably by fortuitous findings. It has taken a new path in the creation of novel therapeutics based on existent or authorized drugs in recent years. Importantly, our knowledge of cancer biology and the related cancer hallmarks is growing. This, together with repurposing studies that use modern bioinformatics and comprehensive screening of the complete pharmacopeia, should lead to the discovery of novel medicines and targets. Furthermore, the usage of non-oncology pharmaceuticals, which make up most of our treatments, has the potential to speed up drug repurposing even further. We looked at both phenotypic-based and target-based methods of medication repurposing as well as described and assessed old non-oncology medications as prospective candidates for drug repurposing based on a broad knowledge of these principles and associated investigations of drug repurposing over the previous decade. Some of these medications successfully regulate at least one characteristic of cancer, whereas the others have a broad anticancer activity by regulating several targets through different signaling pathways, which is often brought on by various simultaneous signaling pathways. Furthermore, the emergence of computerized databases of disease gene targets, functional readouts, and clinical data encompassing inter-individual genetic variants and toxicities has allowed an alternative “big data” approach to grow at an unheard-of rate during the past decade. Here, we review the sources that are now on hand and speculate on significant upside possibilities.