The topic of drug repurposing is currently receiving a great deal of attention in the field of health care. The article from Cha et al. examines this issue as part of the innovation policy of pharmaceutical companies operating around the world (2017). The authors describe in detail the goals and essence of drug repurposing, giving examples from work in the field of oncology diseases. One of the promising directions for the activities of pharmaceutical companies is the search for properties in the formulations of already existing on the market drugs that can be effective in new areas.
The authors set out to examine the activities of various companies in repurposing drugs in the field of cancer treatment. The main methods of companies were classified, and the economic feasibility of such actions was formulated. Having studied the current state of the drug market and the history of cancer diagnosis treatment, Cha et al. justified the relevance of their study by the fact that cancer diseases occupy the leading position in terms of mortality.
At the same time that colossal resources are spent every day on the development of cancer chemotherapy, its early diagnosis and primary prevention. Over the past 15 years, hundreds of pharmaceutical companies have opened in connection with the development of new technologies to create anti-tumor drugs (To & Cho, 2020). Investment in the pharmaceutical sector has doubled in the U.S. and is also growing in the European Union. However, this has not led to proportional growth in the number of effective new classes of anticancer drugs (Saxena, 2022). In the U.S., over 5,000 drugs are approved by the Food and Drug Administration for clinical trials each year, but only 1–5% of registered drugs show efficacy in the first phase of clinical trials (Cha et al., 2017). This situation leads to conclusions about the need to intensify the policy of drug repurposing in all large and small pharma companies, it is necessary to increase the share of costs for the research sector within companies.
Identification of drugs with antitumor activity among already existing drugs that have undergone preclinical and clinical safety trials can accelerate the process of introducing a drug into use and reduce costs. At the same time, this area of research is mostly in the non-profit sector, which explains the difficulty of finding funding for it and the lack of large-scale trials (Saxena, 2022). Thus, the issues raised in this article correlate well with the topics studied in the course on optimizing production, as well as getting financial sources for non-commercial projects of large enterprises.
The new economic important information for me was that the repurposing of drugs that is already used in medical practice makes it impossible to patent them in a new capacity; this fact reduces such activities to the non-profit sphere. I also found it interesting to summarize existing methods of repurposing in medicine, which, to a large extent, can be applied to any industry. It was clear from the study that many large manufacturers such as AstraZeneca and Bayer have been actively researching over the past 5 years (Cha et al., 2017). However, that the policy of repurposing has been plagued by problems in finding funding as well as a lack of effectiveness of existing methods. This raises concerns about the prospects for this work in the absence of a scientific and economic base. In this study, I would like to get information about what the authors see as the directions for further work and what specialists should be involved in addressing the issues raised.
In general, the research data applied to the field of oncology can be applied in the practice of an economist or manager working in any field, as the authors disclosed the complexities and peculiarities of the process of re-profiling. Existing methods have been highlighted and their specific shortcomings demonstrated. The latter can help the specialist to make the right choice when planning the repurposing of different products.
References
Cha, Y., Erez, T., Reynolds, I. J., Kumar, D., Ross, J., Koytiger, G., Kusko, R., Zeskind, B., Risso, S., Kagan, E., Papapetropoulos, S., Grossman, I., & Laifenfeld, D. (2017). Drug repurposing from the perspective of pharmaceutical companies. British Journal of Pharmacology, 175(2), 168–180.
Saxena, S. K. (2022). Drug repurposing: Molecular aspects and therapeutic applications. Intechopen.
To, K. K. W., & Cho, W. C. S. (2020). Drug repurposing in cancer therapy. Elsevier Gezondheidszorg.