Badre Hammond, Gerallt Williams and Herve Pacaud discuss the growing trend of repurposing, whereby an existing drug product is reformulated for a new route of administration and/or therapeutic area, with a particular eye on the advantages of repurposing for the nasal route.
New chemical entity (NCE) development and commercialization requires 10 to 15 years of development and represents around US$2.6 billion (£1.9 billion) in investment.1 The huge scale of this requirement has led to a growing trend towards repurposing already existing molecules.2 These developments are often undertaken by smaller technology companies and start-ups that are looking to explore new markets and new therapy areas.
For clarification, when we talk about repurposing, we mean the process by which pharmaceutical companies can leverage an existing drug and reformulate it by finding new routes of administration, new indications or new therapy areas. By doing so effectively, a whole spectrum of new lifecycle management opportunities can be opened up. Larger pharmaceutical companies have also recognized the benefits of drug repurposing, in particular in the use of nasal products to treat central nervous system (CNS) conditions.
