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Drug Repurposing in Parkinson’s Disease

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Abstract

The development of an intervention to slow or halt disease progression remains the greatest unmet therapeutic need in Parkinson’s disease. Given the number of failures of various novel interventions in disease-modifying clinical trials in combination with the ever-increasing costs and lengthy processes for drug development, attention is being turned to utilizing existing compounds approved for other indications as novel treatments in Parkinson’s disease. Advances in rational and systemic drug repurposing have identified a number of drugs with potential benefits for Parkinson’s disease pathology and offer a potentially quicker route to drug discovery. Here, we review the safety and potential efficacy of the most promising candidates repurposed as potential disease-modifying treatments for Parkinson’s disease in the advanced stages of clinical testing.

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  1. Department of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences, UCL Institute of Neurology and National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London, UK

    Dilan Athauda & Thomas Foltynie

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  1. Dilan Athauda
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Correspondence to Thomas Foltynie.

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DA received funding from the Cure Parkinson’s Trust. No funding was received specifically for the publication of this review.

Conflict of interest

DA has no conflicts of interest. TF has received honoraria from Profile Pharma, BIAL, AbbVie, Genus, Medtronic, and St Jude Medical. DA and TF are investigators on the Exenatide-PD trial.

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Athauda, D., Foltynie, T. Drug Repurposing in Parkinson’s Disease. CNS Drugs 32, 747–761 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40263-018-0548-y

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