Drug Repurposing: An Emerging Tool for Drug Reuse, Recycling and Discovery.

Drug repositioning or repurposing is a revolutionary breakthrough in drug development that focuses on rediscovering new uses for old therapeutic agents. Drug repositioning can be defined more precisely as the process of exploring new indications for an already approved drug while drug repurposing includes overall re-development approaches grounded in the identical chemical structure of the active drug moiety as in the original product. The repositioning approach accelerates the drug development process, curtails the cost and risk inherent to drug development. The strategy focuses on the polypharmacology of drugs to unlocks novel opportunities for logically designing more efficient therapeutic agents for unmet medical disorders. Drug repositioning also expresses certain regulatory challenges that hamper its further utilization. The review outlines the eminent role of drug repositioning in new drug discovery, methods to predict the molecular targets of a drug molecule, advantages that the strategy offers to the pharmaceutical industries, explaining how the industrial collaborations with academics can assist in the discovering more repositioning opportunities. The focus of the review is to highlight the latest applications of drug repositioning in various disorders. The review also includes a comparison of old and new therapeutic uses of repurposed drugs, assessing their novel mechanisms of action and pharmacological effects in the management of various disorders. Various restrictions and challenges that repurposed drugs come across during their development and regulatory phases are also highlighted.

Transdermal lipid vesicular delivery of iloperidone: Formulation, in vitro and in vivo evaluation.

The objective of present study was to develop and evaluate lipid vesicular transdermal system of iloperidone. Liposomes were prepared successfully using thin film hydration method. With aim of enhancing permeation, cholesterol from liposomes was replaced with transcutol to give PEVs. Liposomes and PEVs were evaluated for particle size, shape, entrapment efficiency, viscosity and release study. The vesicles were incorporated in 0.5% of Carbopol gel and evaluated. Particle size of liposomes and PEVs was found between 200-300 nm and entrapment efficiency was found 80-90%w/w. The transdermal gels were homogeneous, spreadable having acceptable pH and drug content between 90-100%.In ex vivo studies, both liposomes and PEVs showed relatively higher skin deposition and permeation of Iloperidone than the plain drug without vesicles. The in vivo pharmacokinetics studies showed relative bioavailability of the PEV loaded gel as 62% and 166% when compared to the oral drug and gel without vesicles respectively. Pharmacodynamic studies showed FRT and HRT delay responses of the transdermal gel systems were significant[p < 0.05] as compared to control at the end of 24 hs. Thus, it can be concluded that transdermal delivery system can be a promising approach for sustained delivery of Iloperidone.

Artificial intelligence and its potential in oncology.

The two main branches associated with Artificial Intelligence (AI) in medicine are virtual and physical. The virtual component includes machine learning (ML) and algorithms, whereas physical AI includes medical devices and robots for delivering care. AI is used successfully in tumour segmentation, histopathological diagnosis, tracking tumour development, and prognosis prediction. CURATE.AI, developed at the National University of Singapore, is a platform that automatically decides the optimum dose of drugs for a durable response, allowing the patient to resume a completely normal life. With the involvement of technology multinationals, such as Google and Microsoft, in AI and healthcare in association with leading healthcare companies, the future of AI in healthcare looks very promising.