122nd General Meeting of the KCS

Type Symposium
Area Current Trends in Drug Repositioning
Room No. Room 306B
Time THU 15:40-:
Code MEDI-1
Subject Change positions and develop new drugs at half price!
Authors Jin Keon Pai
1ST Biotherapeutics Inc., Korea
Abstract Despite the explosive development of biotechnology, the cost and duration of new drug development continues to increase, and the number of newly approved drugs by FDA/EMA is declining. To circumvent some of the most expensive drug discovery processes, companies pursue ‘Drug Repositioning’ strategy to increase their productivity (new drugs to market) by reducing the discovery and development timeline. ‘Drug repositioning’ identifies new therapeutic opportunities for existing drugs and compounds. This process seeks to discover new applications for an existing drug that were not previously referenced and not currently prescribed or investigated. This decreases the overall cost of bringing the drug to market because the safety and pharmacokinetic profiles of the repositioned candidates are already established.
Finding a good new drug development target is very difficult. Even though you identified new target, the biggest problem with ‘drug repositioning’ is it possesses a limited candidate substance for screen. There are only 4,000 compounds are available for screen including the FDA's approved substances. Using new methods such as DNA-encoded Libraries, you will be able to screen millions of candidate substances. Another problem is that if the drug value used in current usage of the candidate substance obtained through ‘drug repositioning’ is too low, it is causing a problem. Since we cannot exceed the current usage of low prices by the rules, the new usage will bring poor business. For example, you have identified the immune activator for drug repositioning. It is expected to respond very well to the "menstrual pain" that afflicts women. However, you must decide whether you must pursue further or not.
Glucagon-like peptide-1(GLP-1) receptor agonists are used for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus with a low risk of hypoglycemia and the additional benefit of clinically relevant weight loss. Growing evidence suggests that agonists of the glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor provide neuroprotection across a range of experimental models of Parkinson's disease (PD). Last year, a small proof-of-concept, open-label human trial of exenatide in the treatment moderate severity PD appeared to show persistent improvements in motor and cognitive function. The underlying mechanisms of action remain unclear, but as evidence for the potential use of GLP-1 agonists in treating several neurodegenerative disease mounts, and with several clinical trials of GLP-1 analogues in PD and Alzheimer's disease (AD) currently underway. Here I would like to review this ‘drug repositioning’ of the neuroprotective effects of GLP-1 analogues for their potential therapeutic utility with relevance to PD and PD dementia (PDD).
E-mail jkp@1stbio.com