Therapy Analysis - Drug reprofiling
Promise for the future
Increasingly stringent regulations for approval of new drugs, coupled with the spiralling cost of pharmaceutical R&D, means numerous roadblocks exist in the path towards developing novel drug candidates. Reprofiling existing drugs, which have already progressed some way through this development minefield, offers a way of reducing the risks and costs associated with drug development, and possibly shortening the time to approval. It therefore represents a particularly attractive route to revenue for start-up and specialty companies. Reprofiling does, however, bring its own hurdle of successfully identifying an appropriate therapeutic area where the drug demonstrates significant efficacy, to give it the best chance of successful approval. So, can the shelved drugs of yesterday provide an answer to the drug development challenges of tomorrow? Only time will tell.
Jonathan Stephens
Pharmaprojects Analyst
Image courtesy of SElefant under the GNU free documentation license 1.2
