Importance of versatile medications and Clinical pharmacist role in

discovering new indication of existing drugs.

Authors: ABDULLRAHMAN ALAM, BASEM ALSOLAMI, IBRAHIM ALZAHRANI
MOHAMED ALSHAMRANI
Supervisore : ABEDULLAH KHAN
Introduction:
Versatile medication is a drug used for multiple indications. The limitations of the new drug
development process due to the total cost to launch a product has been estimated to be
US$ 800 million [1] and probably exceeds that figure today. The main reasons for
drug failure are efficacy (30%), toxicity (20%) and pharmacokinetic issues (10%) [2].
An alternative strategy to reduce attrition rates is to use existing proprietary
compounds to target additional indications.
Objective:
To show the importance of versatile medication use with example and the clinical pharmacist
role in discovering the existing drugs for other indications.
Materials:
On the health care team, the clinical pharmacist is the key member who provides ongoing drug
therapy monitoring. In this paper, researchers discussed the importance of medication monitoring
which helps in discovering the new indications of existing drugs.
Results:
Common mechanisms represent key pathological disease processes that play an important role in
multiple diseases. Therefore, drug targets that modulate common mechanisms have therapeutic
potential in multiple diseases. Medications can use in multiple purposes are finasteride ,
Amitriptyline, Aspirin, Atenolol, Gabapentin, Minoxidil, Sildenafil, Bupropion and other drugs
used for multiple indications.
Conclusion:
A Clinical Pharmacist has an important role in drug safety, have resulted in a need for monitoring
drug experience in the post marketing period suggesting the need for an alternative, innovative
approach that would permit rapid identification of potential problems and support studies of
multiple drugs and/or disease states in patient populations large enough to permit identify other
effects of the drug for multiple indication.
References:
1. DiMasi, J.A. et al. (2003) The price of innovation: new estimates of drug
development costs. J. Health Econ. 22, 151–185
2. Frank, R. and Hargreaves, R. (2003) Clinical biomarkers in drug discovery and
development. Nat. Rev. Drug Discov. 2, 566–580
3. Kummar, S. et al. (2007) Compressing drug development timelines in oncology
using phase 0 trials. Nat. Rev. Cancer 7, 131–139.