Drug databases and their contributions to drug repurposing

Abstract

Drug repurposing is an interesting field in the drug discovery scope because of reducing time and cost. It is also considered as an appropriate method for finding medications for orphan and rare diseases. Hence, many researchers have proposed novel methods based on databases which contain different information. Thus, a suitable organization of data which facilitates the repurposing applications and provides a tool or a web service can be beneficial. In this review, we categorize drug databases and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. Surprisingly, to the best of our knowledge, the importance and potential of databases in drug repurposing are yet to be emphasized. Indeed, the available databases can be divided into several groups based on data content, and different classes can be applied to find a new application of the existing drugs. Furthermore, we propose some suggestions for making databases more effective and popular in this field.