Drug repurposing (also known as drug repositioning) is a strategy that seeks to reuse existing, licensed medications for another indication than it was originally approved for. Repurposing existing drugs is a potential source of new treatment options for cancer patients with high unmet medical needs. For example, aspirin has been found to reduce the risk of cancer metastasis. Drug repurposing has shown its advantages in cancer treatment, such as low cost and avoidance of a significant number of toxicity tests which is time-consuming.
Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have brought about unique opportunities to ameliorate the discovery of novel therapeutic targets, facilitate the precise design of clinical trials on target populations more likely to benefit from the treatment, and characterize novel indications of existing drugs. NGS, especially single-cell sequencing and spatial transcriptomics, will help effectively target matched drugs and provide new ideas for drug repositioning and anti-cancer therapy.
In this Research Topic, we aimed to bring together recent advances on drug repositioning in cancer therapy applying bioinformatics analysis combined with in vivo or in vitro validation, so to provide new evidence for anti-cancer therapy and to help realize the full potential of drug repurposing.
This Research Topic welcomes submissions of Original Research, Case Report, and Review articles that cover all aspects of the effects of drug repurposing on anti-cancer therapy, including but are not limited to the following topics:
• Using bioinformatics analysis and experimental validation to explore specific relevant driver alterations, molecular features, aberrant pathway which are targets of "old drugs".
• Using genomics data to explore novel tumor molecular subtypes that can be targeted by "old drugs" to develop precision cancer therapy.
• Using single-cell sequencing and spatial transcriptomics to explore tumor evolution, tumor microenvironment, tumor heterogeneity, drug resistance, and provide support for drug repurposing.
• Using molecular docking and molecular dramatics to explore the structure and function of aberrant genetic alteration and the fitness of anti-cancer drugs.
• Using integrative genomics (e.g., genomes, epigenomes, transcriptomes, regulomes, proteomes, and metabolomes) to explore drug repurposing in different types of tumors.
• Retrospective control study, retrospective cohort study, and clinical trials about drug repurposing are also considered.
Notably, manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics, computational analysis, or predictions of public databases that are not accompanied by validation (independent cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) will not be accepted in Frontiers in Oncology.
Drug repurposing (also known as drug repositioning) is a strategy that seeks to reuse existing, licensed medications for another indication than it was originally approved for. Repurposing existing drugs is a potential source of new treatment options for cancer patients with high unmet medical needs. For example, aspirin has been found to reduce the risk of cancer metastasis. Drug repurposing has shown its advantages in cancer treatment, such as low cost and avoidance of a significant number of toxicity tests which is time-consuming.
Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have brought about unique opportunities to ameliorate the discovery of novel therapeutic targets, facilitate the precise design of clinical trials on target populations more likely to benefit from the treatment, and characterize novel indications of existing drugs. NGS, especially single-cell sequencing and spatial transcriptomics, will help effectively target matched drugs and provide new ideas for drug repositioning and anti-cancer therapy.
In this Research Topic, we aimed to bring together recent advances on drug repositioning in cancer therapy applying bioinformatics analysis combined with in vivo or in vitro validation, so to provide new evidence for anti-cancer therapy and to help realize the full potential of drug repurposing.
This Research Topic welcomes submissions of Original Research, Case Report, and Review articles that cover all aspects of the effects of drug repurposing on anti-cancer therapy, including but are not limited to the following topics:
• Using bioinformatics analysis and experimental validation to explore specific relevant driver alterations, molecular features, aberrant pathway which are targets of "old drugs".
• Using genomics data to explore novel tumor molecular subtypes that can be targeted by "old drugs" to develop precision cancer therapy.
• Using single-cell sequencing and spatial transcriptomics to explore tumor evolution, tumor microenvironment, tumor heterogeneity, drug resistance, and provide support for drug repurposing.
• Using molecular docking and molecular dramatics to explore the structure and function of aberrant genetic alteration and the fitness of anti-cancer drugs.
• Using integrative genomics (e.g., genomes, epigenomes, transcriptomes, regulomes, proteomes, and metabolomes) to explore drug repurposing in different types of tumors.
• Retrospective control study, retrospective cohort study, and clinical trials about drug repurposing are also considered.
Notably, manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics, computational analysis, or predictions of public databases that are not accompanied by validation (independent cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) will not be accepted in Frontiers in Oncology.
