Exploring Novel Therapeutic Avenues: Drug Repurposing for Neurodegenerative Movement Disorders

Neurodegenerative movement disorders, encompassing conditions such as Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, represent a significant burden on individuals, families, and healthcare systems globally. Traditional drug discovery approaches for these disorders have encountered challenges, including high costs and lengthy timelines. Drug repurposing has emerged in recent years as a promising approach to expedite the discovery of new treatments by leveraging existing drugs approved for other indications. This review explores the landscape of drug repurposed for neurodegenerative movement disorders, highlighting promising candidates, underlying mechanisms, and clinical implications. The rationale behind repurposing, including the advantages of utilizing existing pharmacological agents with established safety profiles and known pharmacokinetics, along with techniques utilized for repurposing (computational and experimental), have been elaborated. Several studies on the potential of pre-existing drugs such as isradipine, tetracycline, ambroxol, metformin, deferiprone, simvastatin, etc., which have been repurposed for neurodegenerative movement disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, etc. have been discussed. Further, the current scenario and future prospective of drug repurposing have also been touched upon.