Drug Repurposing Using Biological Networks

Abstract

Drug repositioning is a strategy to identify new uses for existing, approved, or research drugs that are outside the scope of its original medical indication. Drug repurposing is based on the fact that one drug can act on multiple targets or that two diseases can have molecular similarities, among others. Currently, thanks to the rapid advancement of high-performance technologies, a massive amount of biological and biomedical data is being generated. This allows the use of computational methods and models based on biological networks to develop new possibilities for drug repurposing. Therefore, here, we provide an in-depth review of the main applications of drug repositioning that have been carried out using biological network models. The goal of this review is to show the usefulness of these computational methods to predict associations and to find candidate drugs for repositioning in new indications of certain diseases.

Drug Investigation to Dampen the Comorbidity of Rheumatoid Arthritis and Osteoporosis via Molecular Docking Test

“…Furthermore, drug repositioning is the procedure of obtaining new therapies for already-existing drugs [29]. This process has great synergistic effects, diminishing the cost of new drug development as well as securing its safety [30].…”

A comprehensive review of artificial intelligence and network based approaches to drug repurposing in Covid-19

“…Moreover, networks can be categorized based on the data source used to construct them such as molecular interaction networks, gene regulatory networks, metabolic networks, and protein-protein interaction networks etc. [103] .…”

System and network biology-based computational approaches for drug repositioning

“…Nevertheless, the network data remains incomplete, and some of the drug–target interactions under consideration could only be linked functionally rather than physically. If broadly adopted, the network tactics used in this study might contribute to the development of new therapeutic strategies for various viral infections ( Somolinos et al, 2021 ). Therefore, it could be concluded that systems biology and network-based approaches have become novel strategies and attractive tools for the discovery and development of newer repurposable drugs candidates and their combinations, as well as identification of their target molecules to combat SARS-COV-2 infection ( Table 13.2 ).…”