Title:Repurposing Drugs for Skin Cancer
VOLUME: 27 ISSUE: 42
Author(s):Levon M. Khachigian*
Affiliation:Vascular Biology and Translational Research, School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052
Keywords:Drug repurposing, drug repositioning, melanoma, skin cancer, cancer, disease, melanoma.
Abstract:Drug repurposing is the process of developing existing or abandoned drugs for a
different disease. Repurposing can circumvent higher costs and times associated with conventional
drug discovery strategies because toxicity and pharmacokinetics profiles are typically
already established. This brief review focuses on efforts to repurpose drugs for skin cancer
and includes reuse of antihypertensives, anthelmintics and antifungals among a range of other
medicines. Repurposing not only ushers promising known drugs for new indications, the
process of repurposing can uncover new mechanistic insights in the pathogenesis of disease
and uncover new opportunities for pharmaceutical intervention.
