Drug repurposing in oncology.

Abstract

In a Comment by Audrey Tran and Vinay Prasad 1 Tran AA Prasad V Drug repurposing for cancer treatments: a well-intentioned, but misguided strategy. Lancet Oncol. 2020; 21: 1134-1136 Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (10) Google Scholar in The Lancet Oncology, the authors report on drugs originally approved for common indications (eg, diabetes and hypertension) that have been repurposed as potential therapies for cancer patients (eg, metformin, aspirin, and statins). Drug repurposing has gained popularity as a strategy to accelerate drug development because approved drugs have been already assessed for safety and efficacy, and therefore the risk of failure, timeframe, and overall costs from bench to bedside are considered to be lower than if a new or previously untested drug were being tested. 2 Pushpakom S Iorio F Eyers PA et al. Drug repurposing: progress, challenges and recommendations. Nat Rev Drug Disc. 2019; 18: 41-58 Crossref PubMed Scopus (1436) Google Scholar Drug repurposing in oncologyWe read Audrey Tran and Vinay Prasad's critique1 of drug repurposing for cancer with disquiet, as we believe that it seriously mischaracterises the concept. The authors' definition of a repurposed drug as “an affordable, widely available medication, often indicated for a common condition”, is idiosyncratic.1 Drug repurposing is best defined as a strategy for identifying new uses for approved drugs, outside the scope of the original indication.2 These strategies exist on a spectrum, from non-oncology drugs to haemato-oncology drugs applied to solid tumours. Full-Text PDF Drug repurposing for cancer treatments: a well-intentioned, but misguided strategyEnthusiasm for drug repurposing is growing.1 A repurposed drug is typically defined as an affordable, widely available medication, often indicated for a common condition, such as hypertension, diabetes, or hyperlipidaemia, which is hypothesised to benefit patients with cancer. Common examples include statins, angiotensin-receptor blockers, metformin, aspirin, and vitamin D. Full-Text PDF Drug repurposing in oncology – Authors' replyWe define cancer drug repurposing as the testing of non-cancer drugs (eg, metformin, statins, or vitamin D) in cancer settings.1 We do not consider the definition of drug repurposing to mean taking a cancer drug that has been approved for one tumour and testing it in another (eg, testing pembrolizumab, approved for metastatic melanoma, for the treatment of lung cancer). The definition of drug repurposing is a key disagreement with the letters by Gauthier Bouche and colleagues, and Maria Frantzi and colleagues. Full-Text PDF