Scientists from Germany and Denmark may have found a way to predict new uses for existing drugs by taking a closer look at the medications’ adverse effects (Campillos M et al. Science. 2008;321[5886]:263-266).
Adverse effects are often triggered when a medication interacts with proteins other than the drug's intended target. Reasoning that chemically dissimilar drugs with similar adverse effects might sometimes act on the same target protein, the researchers reviewed drug-package inserts of 746 marketed drugs and developed a computational method to compare "side-effect similarities" of various drugs.
After identifying chemically dissimilar drugs with similar adverse effects that could be used to predict shared targets, the researchers validated 13 of 20 pairs of these drugs using in vitro assays; tests of 9 pairs in cultured cells confirmed that the drugs had a desired effect on the cells through interaction with the newly identified target protein. They . . . [Full Text of this Article]
