Drug repurposing — also called repositioning — is the application of an existing, optimised compound to a new disease. Because the molecule's safety and behaviour in people are already understood, it is a pragmatic alternative to the cost and time of developing a new drug from first principles.
Existing human data reduce the early-stage risk that ends most new programmes.
Programmes can move more quickly into human studies.
Lower development cost makes small and rare patient populations viable to serve.
Compounds stopped for strategic or commercial reasons can still hold real therapeutic value.
Studied as a cardiovascular treatment, it was repositioned for erectile dysfunction after clinicians noticed an unexpected effect, and later approved for pulmonary arterial hypertension.
Withdrawn after causing birth defects, it was later approved under strict controls for a complication of leprosy and for multiple myeloma.
First investigated as an antiviral agent, it became a widely used chemotherapy for several solid tumours.
We curate and test compounds against disease models to uncover new uses. A candidate only advances when computational and experimental evidence point the same way.
Licensed drugs with extensive real-world safety experience.
Molecules with human data that may suit a different disease better than the one they were built for.
Discontinued programmes we can in-license from partners for new indications.
A medicine that fails in a broad population can succeed in a well-defined subgroup.