Chapter 27 - Drug Repositioning Strategies to Explore New Candidates Treating Prostate Cancer

Abstract

Drug discovery and development is a complex, resource-intensive, time-consuming, and highly regulated process. Drug repositioning, also called drug repurposing or drug recycling, has appeared as an innovative strategy in the last decade and offers the promise of reducing drug development time frames and costs. Here, we begin with the recent developments that led to the evolution of pharmacology over the last decades. A conceptual summary of different drug repositioning approaches has been given. Then, the publicly available web-based tools for drug repositioning are presented, and a comprehensive analysis is performed on the repurposed noncancer drugs against prostate cancer through these tools. Finally, we discuss the gaps and future challenges for drug repositioning approaches and the concepts to propel the field forward for treating complex diseases as well as prostate cancer.