Repurposing of medicines – the underrated champion of sustainable innovation: policy brief

Overview

Drug repurposing (‎also called drug repositioning, reprofiling or retasking)‎ is a strategy to identify new uses for approved or investigational medicines that are outside the scope of the original medical indication. New treatments are sought mainly from products that are already in use, but also from compounds that have been shelved, withdrawn or abandoned because they did not perform as expected in their primary designated indications or because better therapies emerged. This report discusses non-commercial establishment of new cancer treatments by using off-patent products relying on both “hard repurposing” (‎repurposing of non-cancer medicines for oncology use)‎ and “soft repurposing” (‎adding new cancer indications for established cancer medicines)‎ approaches.