Drug Repositioning: An Opportunity to Develop Novel Treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease

doi:10.3390/ph6101304

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Pharmaceuticals 2013, 6(10), 1304-1321; doi:10.3390/ph6101304

Review

Drug Repositioning: An Opportunity to Develop Novel Treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease

Anne Corbett, Gareth Williams and Clive Ballard *

Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases, Guy's Campus, King's College London, London SE1 1UL, UK

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received: 17 September 2013; in revised form: 6 October 2013 / Accepted: 8 October 2013 / Published: 11 October 2013

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drug Repositioning)

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Abstract: Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia, affecting approximately two thirds of the 35 million people worldwide with the condition. Despite this, effective treatments are lacking, and there are no drugs that elicit disease modifying effects to improve outcome. There is an urgent need to develop and evaluate more effective pharmacological treatments. Drug repositioning offers an exciting opportunity to repurpose existing licensed treatments for use in AD, with the benefit of providing a far more rapid route to the clinic than through novel drug discovery approaches. This review outlines the current most promising candidates for repositioning in AD, their supporting evidence and their progress through trials to date. Furthermore, it begins to explore the potential of new transcriptomic and microarray techniques to consider the future of drug repositioning as a viable approach to drug discovery.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s; repositioning; treatment; drug

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Cite This Article

MDPI and ACS Style

Corbett, A.; Williams, G.; Ballard, C. Drug Repositioning: An Opportunity to Develop Novel Treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease. Pharmaceuticals 2013, 6, 1304-1321.

AMA Style

Corbett A, Williams G, Ballard C. Drug Repositioning: An Opportunity to Develop Novel Treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease. Pharmaceuticals. 2013; 6(10):1304-1321.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Corbett, Anne; Williams, Gareth; Ballard, Clive. 2013. "Drug Repositioning: An Opportunity to Develop Novel Treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease." Pharmaceuticals 6, no. 10: 1304-1321.

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