Existing Drug Repurposing for Glioblastoma to Discover Candidate Drugs as a New Approach

Author(s):  
Bo Yang ◽  
Xiande Wang ◽  
Dong Dong ◽  
Yunqing Pan ◽  
Junhua Wu ◽  
...  

Aims: Repurposing of drugs has been hypothesized as a means of identifying novel treatment methods for certain diseases. Background: Glioblastoma (GB) is an aggressive type of human cancer; the most effective treatment for glioblastoma is chemotherapy. Whereas, when repurposing drugs, a lot of time and money can be saved. Objective: Repurposing of the existing drug may be used to discover candidate drugs for individualized treatments of GB. Method: We used the bioinformatics method to obtain the candidate drugs. In addition, the drugs were verified by MTT assay, Transwell® assays, TUNEL staining, and in vivo tumor formation experiments, as well as statistical analysis. Result: We obtained 4 candidate drugs suitable for the treatment of glioma: camptothecin, doxorubicin, daunorubicin, and mitoxantrone by expression spectrum data, IPAS algorithm analysis, and drug-pathway connectivity analysis. These validation experiments showed that camptothecin was more effective at treating the GB, such as MTT assay, Transwell® assays, TUNEL staining, and in vivo tumor formation. Conclusion: With regard to personalized treatment, this present study may be used to guide the research of new drugs via verification experiments and tumor formation. The present study also provides a guide to systematic, individualized drug discovery for complex diseases and may contribute to the future application of individualized treatments.

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (10) ◽  
pp. 1123-1140
Author(s):  
Jilan Nazeam ◽  
Esraa Z. Mohammed ◽  
Mariam Raafat ◽  
Mariam Houssein ◽  
Asmaa Elkafoury ◽  
...  

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the causative pathogen of pandemic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). So far, no approved therapy has been developed to halt the spread of the pathogen, and unfortunately, the strategies for developing a new therapy will require a long time and very extensive resources. Therefore, drug repurposing has emerged as an ideal strategy toward a smart, versatile, quick way to confine the lethal disease. In this endeavor, natural products have been an untapped source for new drugs. This review represents the confederated experience of multidisciplinary researchers of 99 articles using several databases: Google Scholar, Science Direct, MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed. To establish the hypothesis, a Bayesian perspective of a systematic review was used to outline evidence synthesis. Our docking documentation of 69 compounds and future research agenda assumptions were directed toward finding an effective and economic anti-COVID-19 treatment from natural products. Glucosinolate, flavones, and sulfated nitrogenous compounds demonstrate direct anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity through inhibition protease enzymes and may be considered potential candidates against coronavirus. These findings could be a starting point to initiate an integrative study that may encompass interested scientists and research institutes to test the hypothesis in vitro, in vivo, and in clinics after satisfying all ethical requirements.


2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcin Ożarowski ◽  
Radosław Kujawski ◽  
Przemysław Ł. Mikołajczak ◽  
Karolina Wielgus ◽  
Andrzej Klejewski ◽  
...  

Summary Flavonoids and their conjugates are the most important group of natural chemical compounds in drug discovery and development. The search for pharmacological activity and new mechanisms of activity of these chemical compounds, which may inhibit mediators of inflammation and influence the structure and function of endothelial cells, can be an interesting pharmacological strategy for the prevention and adjunctive treatments of hypertension, especially induced by pregnancy. Because cardiovascular diseases have multi-factorial pathogenesis these natural chemical compounds with wide spectrum of biological activities are the most interesting source of new drugs. Extracts from one of the most popular plant used in Traditional Chinese Medicine, Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi could be a very interesting source of flavonoids because of its exact content in quercetin, apigenin, chrysin and scutellarin as well as in baicalin. These flavonoids exert vasoprotective properties and many activities such as: anti-oxidative via several pathways, anti-in-flammatory, anti-ischaemic, cardioprotective and anti-hypertensive. However, there is lack of summaries of results of studies in context of potential and future application of flavonoids with determined composition and activity. Our review aims to provide a literature survey of in vitro, in vivo and ex vivo pharmacological studies of selected flavonoids (apigenin, chrysin and scutellarin, baicalin) in various models of hypertension carried out in 2008–2018.


Pharmaceutics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 2117
Author(s):  
Vlad Groza ◽  
Mihai Udrescu ◽  
Alexandru Bozdog ◽  
Lucreţia Udrescu

Drug repurposing is a valuable alternative to traditional drug design based on the assumption that medicines have multiple functions. Computer-based techniques use ever-growing drug databases to uncover new drug repurposing hints, which require further validation with in vitro and in vivo experiments. Indeed, such a scientific undertaking can be particularly effective in the case of rare diseases (resources for developing new drugs are scarce) and new diseases such as COVID-19 (designing new drugs require too much time). This paper introduces a new, completely automated computational drug repurposing pipeline based on drug–gene interaction data. We obtained drug–gene interaction data from an earlier version of DrugBank, built a drug–gene interaction network, and projected it as a drug–drug similarity network (DDSN). We then clustered DDSN by optimizing modularity resolution, used the ATC codes distribution within each cluster to identify potential drug repurposing candidates, and verified repurposing hints with the latest DrugBank ATC codes. Finally, using the best modularity resolution found with our method, we applied our pipeline to the latest DrugBank drug–gene interaction data to generate a comprehensive drug repurposing hint list.


Cancers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 6236
Author(s):  
Nicolai Stransky ◽  
Peter Ruth ◽  
Matthias Schwab ◽  
Markus W. Löffler

Drug repurposing is a complementary pathway for introducing new drugs against cancer. Broad systematic assessments of ongoing repurposing efforts in oncology are lacking, but may be helpful to critically appraise current and future efforts. Hence, we conducted a systematic PubMed search encompassing 100 frequently prescribed and 100 randomly selected drugs, and assessed the published preclinical anti-cancer effects. Furthermore, we evaluated all the identified original articles for methodological quality. We found reports indicating anti-cancer effects for 138/200 drugs, especially among frequently prescribed drugs (81/100). Most were reports suggesting single-agent activity of the drugs (61%). Basic information, such as the cell line used or control treatments utilized, were reported consistently, while more detailed information (e.g., excluded data) was mostly missing. The majority (56%) of in vivo studies reported randomizing animals, while only few articles stated that the experiments were conducted in a blinded fashion. In conclusion, we found promising reports of anti-cancer effects for the majority of the assessed drugs, but speculate that many of them are false-positive findings. Reward systems should be adjusted to encourage the widespread usage of high reporting quality and bias-reducing methodologies, aiming to decrease the rate of false-positive results, and thereby increasing the trust in the findings.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shengwei Ji ◽  
Mingming Liu ◽  
Eloiza May Galon ◽  
Mohamed Abdo Rizk ◽  
Bumduuren Tuvshintulga ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Drug resistance and severe side effects are major challenges in the treatment of babesiosis as they lead to less choices for treatment. Development of new drugs to enrich the treatment strategies and delay the emergence of drug resistance in parasites is still needed. Naphthoquine (NQ) combined with artemisinin treats Plasmodium infection by rapid parasite clearance. The current study repurposed NQ as a babesiosis drug treatment by evaluating the effects of naphthoquine phosphate (NQP) as a single dose treatment for babesiosis. Methods: In vitro anti-Babesia activity of NQP was tested on Babesia gibsoni cultures. The inhibition of parasite growth was verified using a SYBR green I-based fluorescence assay. In vivo efficacy of NQP was evaluated using BALB/c mice infected with Babesia rodhaini. The parasitemia level and hematocrit values were monitored. Results: The half maximal inhibitory concentration of NQP against B. gibsoni in vitro was 3.3 ± 0.5 μM. Oral administration of NQP for 5 successive days at a dose of 40 mg/kg of body weight resulted in significant inhibition on parasite growth compared with the control group. All mice in NQP-treated group survived, whereas the mice in control group died between days 6 and 9 post infection. Conclusion: This is the first study to evaluate the anti-Babesia activity of NQP in vitro and in vivo. The results showed that NQP is a promising drug for babesiosis treatment and drug repurposing may provide new treatment strategies for babesiosis.


Author(s):  
Cynthia Vanesa Rivero ◽  
Santiago José Martínez ◽  
Paul Novick ◽  
Juan Agustín Cueto ◽  
Betiana Nebaí Salassa ◽  
...  

T. cruzi, the causal agent of Chagas disease, is a parasite able to infect different types of host cells and to persist chronically in the tissues of human and animal hosts. These qualities and the lack of an effective treatment for the chronic stage of the disease have contributed to the durability and the spread of the disease around the world. There is an urgent necessity to find new therapies for Chagas disease. Drug repurposing is a promising and cost-saving strategy for finding new drugs for different illnesses. In this work we describe the effect of carvedilol on T. cruzi. This compound, selected by virtual screening, increased the accumulation of immature autophagosomes characterized by lower acidity and hydrolytic properties. As a consequence of this action, the survival of trypomastigotes and the replication of epimastigotes and amastigotes were impaired, resulting in a significant reduction of infection and parasite load. Furthermore, carvedilol reduced the whole-body parasite burden peak in infected mice. In summary, in this work we present a repurposed drug with a significant in vitro and in vivo activity against T. cruzi. These data in addition to other pharmacological properties make carvedilol an attractive lead for Chagas disease treatment.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 2050313X1983216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josep Sulé-Suso ◽  
Nick A Watson ◽  
Daniel G van Pittius ◽  
Apurna Jegannathen

In spite of new drugs, lung cancer is associated with a very poor prognosis. While targeted therapies are improving outcomes, it is not uncommon for many patients to have only a partial response, and relapse during follow-up. Thus, new drugs or re-evaluation of existing therapies used to treat other non-malignant diseases (drug repurposing) are still needed. While this research both in vitro and in vivo is being carried out, it is important to be attentive to patients where the disease responds to treatments not considered standard in clinical practice. We report here a patient with adenocarcinoma of the lung who, after declining chemotherapy and radiotherapy, presented with tumour response following self-administration of cannabidiol, a non-psychoactive compound present in Cannabis sativa. Prior work has shown that cannabidiol may have anti-neoplastic properties and enhance the immune response to cancer. The data presented here indicate that cannabidiol might have led to a striking response in a patient with lung cancer.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serdar Durdagi

<p>Currently, the world suffers from a new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19. Therefore, there is a need for the urgent development of novel drugs and vaccines for COVID-19. Since it can take years to develop new drugs against this disease, here we used a hybrid combined molecular modeling approach in virtual drug screening repurposing study to identify new compounds against this disease. One of the important SARS-CoV-2 targets namely type 2 transmembrane serine protease (TMPRSS2) was screened with NPC’s NIH small molecule library which includes approved drugs by FDA and compounds in clinical investigation. We used 6654 small molecules in molecular docking and top-50 docking scored compounds were initially used in short (10-ns) molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Based on average MM/GBSA binding free energy results, long (100-ns) MD simulations were employed for the identified hits. Both binding energy results as well as crucial residues in ligand binding were also compared with a positive control TMPRSS2 inhibitor, Camostat mesylate. Based on these numerical calculations we proposed a compound (benzquercin) as strong TMPRSS2 inhibitor. If these results can be validated by in vitro and in vivo studies, benzquercin can be considered to be used as inhibitor of TMPRSS2 at the clinical studies.</p>


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serdar Durdagi

<p>Currently, the world suffers from a new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19. Therefore, there is a need for the urgent development of novel drugs and vaccines for COVID-19. Since it can take years to develop new drugs against this disease, here we used a hybrid combined molecular modeling approach in virtual drug screening repurposing study to identify new compounds against this disease. One of the important SARS-CoV-2 targets namely type 2 transmembrane serine protease (TMPRSS2) was screened with NPC’s NIH small molecule library which includes approved drugs by FDA and compounds in clinical investigation. We used 6654 small molecules in molecular docking and top-50 docking scored compounds were initially used in short (10-ns) molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Based on average MM/GBSA binding free energy results, long (100-ns) MD simulations were employed for the identified hits. Both binding energy results as well as crucial residues in ligand binding were also compared with a positive control TMPRSS2 inhibitor, Camostat mesylate. Based on these numerical calculations we proposed a compound (benzquercin) as strong TMPRSS2 inhibitor. If these results can be validated by in vitro and in vivo studies, benzquercin can be considered to be used as inhibitor of TMPRSS2 at the clinical studies.</p>


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