Repurposing a whole new array of drugs for cancer

Developing a novel drug for cancer can be profitable — but it can also be time-consuming and fraught with failure. One workaround could be to work with what medicine’s already got: repurposing existing, non-oncologic drugs to target cancer. 

A team of researchers at the Broad Institute took a look at this issue, profiling 4,518 medications against 578 human cancer lines. They found an “unexpectedly large” number of non-oncology drugs worked to inhibit cancer cell lines: Nearly 200 showed some sort of effect in slowing tumor growth.

Among the medications that showed anti-cancer properties were the alcohol dependence drug disulfiram, and the veterinary anti-inflammatory drug tepoxalin.