Biomedin 231 Final Paper Submission.docx

1 Drug Repurposing Motivation: The biopharmaceutical industry currently faces a major problem production has not kept pace with the huge increase in R&D spending. Despite numerous new technologies which promised to reduce R&D costs (such as combinatorial chemistry, genomics, and structure-based drug design), the productivity problem has persisted and has forced pharma companies to become more creative. One such strategy that has been adopted has been trying to find new uses for, and better versions of, pre-existing drugs. This strategy is often referred to as drug repurposing, repositioning, or reprofiling.