Abstract
The number of drugs reaching the marketplace each year is decreasing, mainly because of the unexpected adverse effects of potential drugs being revealed at advanced stages of clinical trials. To circumvent this, we have proposed a new strategy for drug discovery and development, which focuses on the use of medicines that have already been approved for use by humans (drug re-positioning). In this strategy, compounds with clinically beneficial pharmacological activity are screened from a library of medicines already in clinical use to be developed for new indications. The advantage of this strategy is that there is a decreased risk of unexpected adverse effects in humans because the safety aspects of these drugs have already been well characterized in humans.
