Abstract
Drug repurposing, in which an established active pharmaceutical ingredient is applied in a new way — for example, for a new indication, and often combined with an alternative method of presentation, such as a novel delivery route — is an evolving strategy for pharmaceutical R&D. This article discusses examples of the success of this strategy, and presents an analysis of sales of US pharmaceutical products that suggests that this low-risk approach to new product development retains substantial commercial value.
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Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to D. Middlemiss for positive criticism and advice in the preparation of this manuscript.
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D.C. is Director of Numedicus.
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Supplementary information S1 (table)
Sales analysis: top 200 drugs in USA* (PDF 443 kb)
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Cavalla, D. APT drug R&D: the right active ingredient in the right presentation for the right therapeutic use. Nat Rev Drug Discov 8, 849–853 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd2981
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd2981
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