Potential Impact of the Multi-Target Drug Approach in the Treatment of Some Complex Diseases

Abstract

It is essential to acknowledge the efforts made thus far to manage or eliminate various disease burden faced by humankind. However, the rising global trends of the so-called incurable diseases continue to put pressure on Pharma industries and other drug discovery platforms. In the past, drugs with more than one target were deemed as undesirable options with interest being on the one-drug-single target. Despite the successes of the single-target drugs, it is currently beyond doubt that these drugs have limited efficacy against complex diseases in which the pathogenesis is dependent on a set of biochemical events and several bioreceptors operating concomitantly. Different approaches have thus been proposed to come up with effective drugs to combat even the complex diseases. In the past, the focus was on producing drugs from screening plant compounds; today, we talk about combination therapy and multi-targeting drugs. The multi-target drugs have recently attracted much attention as promising tools to fight against most challenging diseases, and thus a new research focus area. This review will discuss the potential impact of multi-target drug approach on various complex diseases with focus on malaria, tuberculosis (TB), diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases as the main representatives of multifactorial diseases. We will also discuss alternative ideas to solve the current problems bearing in mind the fourth industrial revolution on drug discovery.

Keywords:

• multi-target drugs
• malaria
• diabetes
• tuberculosis and drug discovery

Acknowledgments

XHM acknowledged the University of Pretoria Research Development Program, CVJ is grateful to CNPq (#310082/2016-1, # 406739/2018-8) and FAPEMIG (#CEX - APQ-00518-17) for fellowship and financial support. FPDV is grateful to Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brazil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001 for fellowship. OJP acknowledges the South African National Research Foundation (Grant Unique Number: 117775). The authors are also grateful to the SA-NRF for the financial support (Grant number: 121928) awarded to RAM.

Disclosure

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.