Repurposed Drugs Targeting Cancer Signaling Pathways: Dissecting New Mechanisms of Action Through in vitro and in vivo Analyses

Drug repurposing (also known as drug repositioning, reprofiling, or re‐tasking) refers to the application of a drug for another indication than it was originally approved for. Once only the result of serendipity, drug repurposing has recently become a cost-effective and relatively low-risk alternative for the development of new cancer treatments due to potentially lower development costs and shorter development timelines, or even a strategy to overcome acquired resistance to targeted therapy and chemotherapy. Typically, drug repurposing candidates have already been found to be sufficiently safe in preclinical models and have shown off-target effects that potentially target the signaling pathways that underlie one or more of the cancer hallmarks. So, the search for secondary effects of known drugs has now taken many forms: clinical trials, in vitro and in vivo experiments and even in silico simulations.

Currently, there are many ongoing efforts to analyze the effects of repurposed drugs on both cancer prevention and therapy; these drugs include, but are not limited to, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, statins, selective estrogen receptor modulators, cardiovascular drugs, antidepressants, and even antibiotics. Repurposed drugs have been found to block cancer development pathways, optimize the efficiency or decrease the secondary effects of chemotherapy, elicit cell death through different mechanisms, among other anti-cancer functions. However, a clearer understanding of their effect and their possible secondary effects are needed to achieve validation of their not intended, but presumably more useful, anti-cancer function.

This Research Topic welcomes the submission of Original Research and Review articles that cover all aspects of the effects of repurposed drugs or drug repurposing candidates on cancer signaling pathways in vitro and in vivo and computational approaches including the following topics (but not limited to):

-Drug repurposing particularly in vitro and in vivo analysis
-Applications of repositioned drugs as potential anti-cancer drugs
-Applications of repositioned drugs for sensitizing to chemotherapy in several types of cancer

This Research Topic is part one of a two-part series - please also see the collection "Repurposed Drugs Targeting Cancer Signaling Pathways: Clinical Insights to Improve Oncologic Therapies"