Drug Repurposing Market - Global Market Share, Trends, Analysis and Forecast, 2023-2032

The global drug repurposing market size was estimated to be US$ 25.2 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 3.4% between 2023 to 2032.

Drug repurposing also called drug reprofiling enables organizations or companies to find novel therapeutical uses for existing drugs. Drug repurposing can be achieved for all the approved, shelved, and experimental drugs.

Advantages of drug repurposing

Repurposed drugs have the potential to generate a new revenue stream for the pharmaceutical industry on existing drug discovery. Drug repurposing also enables better life cycles and patent management of old-generation drugs. As the pharmacokinetic and manufacturing processes are already established, the drug development timeframe is shortened for repurposed constituents.

Drugs approved for usage in other diseases have already undergone pre-clinical and clinical trial are the best candidates for drug repurposing. Such drugs will need to undergo basic efficacy trials and drug-disease interaction studies at a minimum. Similarly, for drugs that are approved and available in the market, many pre-clinical tests, bio-safety assessments, and phase 1 clinical trials can be bypassed in case repurposed targets are discovered. For most of the shelved or discontinued drugs, their existing interaction data, molecular characterization, and manufacturing processes can be reused if they are found to be effective against unknown targets. They will eventually have to undergo all the regulatory compliances, but R&D aspects will be hassle-free.

Both corporate and governmental drug discovery communities can utilize systematic, data-driven approaches and make use of computational biology/ bioinformatics to identify repurposable drugs. Many successful examples like sildenafil, aspirin, and minoxidil have shown the efficacy of drug repurposing.

Challenges in drug repurposing sector

Legal aspects of drug repurposing can be a restraining aspect for breakthroughs. Patenting a new indication for an existing patented drug poses various difficulties. Existing patent holder permissions will be required before repurposing studies, even if efficiency is found for a new target there may be patent sharing or royalty conflicts. This reduces the economic incentives of drug repurposing for third parties.

Many potential repurposing uses or specialized literature of existing drugs are known in the public domain. Off-label or non-registered exploitation of several drugs occurs frequently in clinical usage. This can also affect the novelty and patentability of repurposed drugs.

Technological advances are required in various fields to effectively integrate large-scale data, structural and functional studies, clinical trial documentation, and genomic/proteomic-based tools. Only after attaining coherence in all these domains, we will be able to effectively track drug activity for unspecified targets.

Potential domains for drug repurposing

Unexplored diseases:

Drug repurposing can be effectively used to discover therapeutic solutions for unknown or unexplored diseases. Computational tools for predictive repurposing provide a rapid way to find plausible options for such conditions or diseases, whose pathophysiology is sometimes poorly characterized.

A large-scale genome-sequencing approach to pinpoint the genetic alterations of the disorder can provide a chance to quickly reuse medications that target the corresponding protein or genes. So, without the requirement for initial research, repurposing such drugs may be directly translated into swift clinical trials without even undertaking wet-lab experimentation.

Combination drug therapies:

Combination drug therapies instead of monotherapies also possess one of the biggest avenues for drug repurposing studies. The chances of finding suitable usage for existing drug increases exponentially in the case of combinatorial treatments. Thus, the entire replacement of monotherapy drugs or co-treatment with repurposed drugs is the most plausible and simple approach in this arena. This strategy has shown serious potential in recent years as combination therapies have taken a front seat in clinical treatments.

Spectrum disorders that require an individualized approach toward the treatment of patients can also be sufficiently explored by drug repurposing. Therapeutic applications tailored to individual variations in genome, transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome will require increased combinatorial approaches which can be enabled by drug repurposing.

Rare and neglected diseases:

Rare or neglected diseases and disorders can also benefit from the drug repurposing process. Attractive incentives for neglected diseases can be generated in an economically unfavourable domain by the use of repurposed drugs. These disease domains maybe not be profitable in an economic sense but other forms of value such as corporate social responsibility can be achieved through such endeavours.

Governmental grants, tax waiving, regulatory fee waivers, and fast-track approval enable drug research for such rare or neglected diseases. Drug repurposing can help the pharmaceutical industry overcome economic barriers by repurposing existing drugs without incurring R&D costs.

Ease of usage:

Ease of administration of drugs can be tackled by drug repurposing approaches. Designing treatments or deciding on synergistic bioactive compound therapies from existing drugs can be done. Effective but complex medicines can be replaced with repurposed medications that are easy to administer, require a shorter time to treat patients, and offer a protective function against the development of resistant causative agents.

Some newly identified bioactive compounds might have low potency or low plasma concentration tolerance. Synergistic combinations with existing medications can increase their function or enable tolerance. Such drug repurposing approaches can also qualify as co-medication techniques for cancer chemo-therapies.

Pharmaceutical companies possess a large trove of discontinued, failed, and shelved drugs. This act as a library of proprietary chemicals that can be considered IP capital. Many of these candidate chemicals can be rescued by repurposing them to address novel diseases. Pharmaceutical companies also have access to a large set of data from clinical trials and drug interaction studies. This data can be utilized to track effective targets and symptoms for their existing catalogue of drugs.

Such drug rescue and repurposing strategies provide an excellent opportunity for the pharmaceutical sector to commercially resuscitate abandoned or discarded drug projects and maximize their portfolio.

The major players operating in the industrial burner market are Astellas Pharma, Atomwise Inc, Biovista Inc, Exscientia Limited, Centene Corp (Health Net, LLC), SOM Innovation Biotech S.A., NuMedii Inc, Recursion Pharmaceuticals Inc, Pfizer Inc, Sosei Group Corp (SoseiHeptares), Healx, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, GSK plc and others.

Market segmentation

By Types

• Disease-centric
• Drug-centric
• Target-centric

By Therapeutic Area

• Similar Therapeutic Area
• Dissimilar Therapeutic Area

By Geography

• North America
• United States
• Canada
• Rest of North America
• Europe
• Germany
• United Kingdom
• Italy
• France
• Spain
• Rest of Europe
• Asia Pacific
• Japan
• India
• China
• Australia
• Rest of Asia Pacific
• Middle East & Africa
• UAE
• Saudi Arabia
• South Africa
• Rest of the Middle East & Africa
• South America
• Brazil
• Rest of South America