The Potential of Genetic Data for Prioritizing Drug Repurposing Efforts
Dipender Gill, Marijana Vujković
Abstract
Alzheimer disease is an increasingly prevalent cause of morbidity and mortality globally. Given the significant time and cost associated with developing new drugs, effort is being invested into exploring the repurposing potential of existing medications. However, clinical trials exploring drug efficacy against Alzheimer disease still represent a major undertaking, typically recruiting thousands of patients for several years of follow-up. Leveraging genetic variants that mimic the effects of drug target perturbation represents an opportunity to prioritize drug classes for clinical study,1 thus offering the potential to considerably improve the efficiency of drug development. In the accompanying article, Tang et al.2 identified genetic variants mimicking the effects of distinct antidiabetic drug classes to explore potential repurposing opportunities against Alzheimer disease.