Ready remedies

The many benefits of repurposing drugs

- Pooja Biraia Jaiswal

Tocilizumab was a drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis. But, during the Covid-19 pandemic it was used as an injection to treat the symptoms of the coronavirus.

The pandemic led to many drugs being repurposed. Examples include hydroxychloroquine, HIV drugs and vitamin C.

The drug developed by Gilead for Ebola received FDA approval for emergency use for Covid-19 patients. Subsequently, India, too, gave approval for emergency use. Favipiravir, a drug used to treat new strains of influenza, received emergency use authorisation from the FDA and in India for mild to moderate Covid-19 patients.

Then, in 2021, the UK's National Health Services started a project called Medicines Repurposing Programme. Its aim is finding alternative use for existing medicines.

But, perhaps the project was not so novel. Experts say that this has been going on for centuries. Many a time, drugs have been repurposed without being labelled so. The oldest example of drug repurposing is aspirin, and it is also the drug that has been repurposed the most.

When German company Bayer discovered the molecule in 1899, it was thought of as an analgesic. Later, it was found that aspirin also helped in decreasing blood clots. As a result, it was approved for use as an antiplatelet drug and millions across the world used low doses of aspirin to prevent heart attacks. This discovery came almost a century after aspirin was discovered and it led to a Nobel Prize. Now, research has it that aspirin may help in the prevention of colon cancer.

Similarly, sildenafil (better known as Viagra), developed by US pharmaceutical company Pfizer in 1989, was a drug to lower blood pressure. But, during trials, people gave feedback that they were getting penile erections.