Recent news
April 2011
NIH creates collection of approved drugs to identify new therapies for neglected diseases
April 29, 2011 -- Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have assembled a collection of thousands of approved drugs for clinical use against rare and neglected diseases. The researchers are looking for additional uses of the drugs in an effort to find off-label therapies. The effort is coordinated by the NIH’s Chemical Genomics Center (NCGC). "This is a critical step to explore the full potential of these drugs for new applications," said NIH Director Francis Collins. He added, "The hope is that this process may identify some potential new treatments for rare and neglected diseases."
The researchers assembled the collection of approved drugs for screening based on information from the NCGC Pharmaceutical Collection browser. The publicly available browser provides complete information on nearly 27,000 active pharmaceutical ingredients, including 2,750 small molecule drugs that have been approved by regulatory agencies from the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan, as well as all compounds that have been registered for human clinical trials.
The browser also provides users with the ability to explore drugs by name, chemical structure, approval status, and indication. Groups interested in developing their own collections can use information provided in the browser, which also includes entries on investigational drugs. The goal is to collect all of the more than 7,500 compounds that have been tested in humans and that present potential jump-start development of treatments for rare and neglected diseases. See the links below for more information.
