Drug discovery is strangled by extraordinary time consuming and costly
processes associated with high failure rates. In the United States, less than 5% of drug
candidates that enter drug testing will be approved by the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) and offered for clinic use. An emerging solution to overcome this
bottleneck in new drug development is to repurpose presently available drugs, a practice
also known as drug repurposing. In this chapter, a general overview of drug repurposing
is reviewed, along with screening methods that have yield successful outcomes.
Emphasis is given on utilizing RNA interference (RNAi) screening to identify
druggable genes that can be targeted by drug repurposing.
Keywords: Antiviral, drug repurposing, host-pathogen, proviral.
