repurposing drugs
Could Repurposed Asthma Drugs Treat Parkinson’s Disease?
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Thinkstock/ia_64
I had asthma as a child, and I still occasionally develop mild wheezing from exercising in cold air or catching a bad cold. I keep an inhaler on hand for those occasions, as this is a quick and effective way to deliver a medication that opens up those constricted airways. Now, an NIH-supported team has made the surprising discovery that some asthma medicines may also hold the potential to treat or help prevent Parkinson’s disease, a chronic, progressive movement disorder that affects at least a half-million Americans.
The results, published recently in the journal Science, provide yet another example of the tremendous potential of testing drugs originally intended for treating one disease for possible use in others [1]. In this particular instance, researchers screened a library of more than 1,100 well-characterized chemical compounds—including drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating asthma—to see if they showed any activity against a molecular mechanism known to be involved in Parkinson’s disease.
Treating Zika Infection: Repurposed Drugs Show Promise
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Credit: National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, NIH
In response to the health threat posed by the recent outbreak of Zika virus in Latin America and its recent spread to Puerto Rico and Florida, researchers have been working at a furious pace to learn more about the mosquito-borne virus. Considerable progress has been made in understanding how Zika might cause babies to be born with unusually small heads and other abnormalities and in developing vaccines that may guard against Zika infection.
Still, there remains an urgent need to find drugs that can be used to treat people already infected with the Zika virus. A team that includes scientists at NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) now has some encouraging news on this front. By testing 6,000 FDA-approved drugs and experimental chemical compounds on Zika-infected human cells in the lab, they’ve shown that some existing drugs might be repurposed to fight Zika infection and prevent the virus from harming the developing brain [1]. While additional research is needed, the new findings suggest it may be possible to speed development and approval of new treatments for Zika infection.
