Journal Article

Drug repurposing for Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders

Van Stone, Alexandra, Cummings, Jeffrey L., Cheng, Feixiong, Cammann, Davis, Zhou, Yadi, Tonegawa-Kuji, Reina, Fonseca, Jorge

2025

Overview

Repurposed drugs provide a rich source of potential therapies for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative disorders (NDD). Repurposed drugs have information from non-clinical studies, phase 1 dosing, and safety and tolerability data collected with the original indication. Computational approaches, “omic” studies, drug databases, and electronic medical records help identify candidate therapies. Generic repurposed agents lack intellectual property protection and are rarely advanced to late-stage trials for AD/NDD. In this review we define repurposing, describe the advantages and challenges of repurposing, offer strategies for overcoming the obstacles, and describe the key contributions of repurposing to the drug development ecosystem. Repurposed drugs provide a rich source of potential therapies for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative disorders (NDD). In this review, the authors discuss the advantages and challenges of repurposing, offer strategies for overcoming the obstacles and describe the key contributions of repurposing to drug development.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group,Nature Portfolio
• Subject: 631/154/433 / 692/617/375/365/1283 / Alzheimer Disease - drug therapy / Alzheimer's disease / Barriers / Brain research / Clinical trials / Dementia / Disease / Drug Development / Drug Repositioning - methods / Drugs / Ecosystem biology / Electronic health records / Electronic medical records / Generic drugs / Genomes / Humanities and Social Sciences / Humans / Intellectual property / Medical records / Medicine / multidisciplinary / Neurodegenerative diseases / Neurodegenerative Diseases - drug therapy / Review / Review Article / Science / Science (multidisciplinary)