There are five methods of finding these new uses:
- Bioinformatics approaches: using mathematical methods of associating drugs to diseases, based on genomic, linguistic or other associative analysis. All such methods need experimental validation
- Pharmacology models: finding newpathway associations for differentdiseases
- Screening for different off-target pharmacological activities among existing drugs
- Clinical experimentation
- Knowledge based approach, based on existing information and bridging to a new patent-protectable aspect
Numedicus uses the last approach, making use of the database at DrugRepurposing.info. In our experience, this has proven accurate and reliable.
A typical collaborative project may involve the following components:
- identification of agreed therapeutic focus
- presentation of anonymised, preliminary ideas
- agreement of scope of collaboration and commercial terms
- identification new therapeutic opportunities
- validation of ideas through preclinical biological determination
- delineation of patent strategy and prosecution of patents
As mentioned in the Track Record section, Numedicus has used the therapeutic switching strategy to identify over a dozen preclinical and clinical development projects.
