Tremendous efforts have been made to elucidate the basis of cancer biology with the aim of promoting anticancer drug development. Especially over the past 20 years, anticancer drug development has developed from conventional cytotoxic agents to target-based and immune-related therapies. Consequently, more than 200 anticancer drugs are available on the market. However, anticancer drug development still suffers high attrition during the later phases of clinical development and is considered to be a difficult and risky therapeutic category within the drug development arena. The disappointing performance of investigational anticancer candidates implies that there are some shortcomings in the translation of preclinical in vitro and in vivo models to humans, and that heterogeneity in the patient population presents a significant challenge. Here, we summarize both successful and failed experiences in anticancer development during the past 20 years and help identify why the current paradigm may be suboptimal. We also offer potential strategies for improvement.
There are tremendous unmet needs in drug development for rare diseases. Computational drug repositioning is a promising approach and has been successfully applied to the development of treatments for diseases. However, how to utilize this knowledge and effectively conduct and implement computational drug repositioning approaches for rare disease therapies is still an open issue. Here, we focus on the means of utilizing accumulated genomic data for accelerating and facilitating drug repositioning for rare diseases. First, we summarize the current genome landscape of rare diseases. Second, we propose several promising bioinformatics approaches and pipelines for computational drug repositioning for rare diseases. Finally, we discuss recent regulatory incentives and other enablers in rare disease drug development and outline the remaining challenges.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.