Abstract
‘Drug promiscuity’ refers to a drug that can act on multiple molecular targets, exhibiting similar or different pharmacological effects. Drugs may interact with unwanted targets, leading to off-target effects (one of the main reasons for side effects). Thus, intervention to prevent off-target effects in the early stages of drug discovery could reduce the risk of failure. The conversion between target and off-target effects is important for drug repurposing. Drug repurposing strategies could reduce research and development costs. This review details the research progress in the rational application of drug promiscuity for the discovery of multi-target drugs, drug repurposing and improving druggability in medicinal chemistry over the last 5 years.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to J Wang and professor Q Kong for valuable discussion.
Financial & competing interests disclosure
This work was supported by the Natural Science Research Foundation of Huaian, Jiangsu China (number HAB201711, HAB201712 and HAG201613), The State Key Program Foundation of Jiangsu Food & Pharmaceutical Science College (number JSSPZD2017101). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.
The authors had this manuscript copyedited by a professional English editing service that specializes in scientific papers, and the source of funding is the The State Key Program Foundation of Jiangsu Food & Pharmaceutical Science College (number JSSPZD2017101).
Ethical disclosure
The authors state that they have obtained appropriate institutional review board approval or have followed the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki for all human or animal experimental investigations. In addition, for investigations involving human subjects, informed consent has been obtained from the participants involved.