Abstract
There are over 90 clinical trials including drug repositioning that have
been initiated to get COVID-19 treatment/management. Antibiotic
resistance, drug tolerance, mutation and adverse drug effects possess a
great deal of setback during therapy especially with emerging infectious
diseases and this necessitates the need for research into getting new
drugs or repositioning the existing ones to meet up with the treatment
of both infectious and non-infectious diseases affecting humanity. Drug
repositioning is a stepwise process that aid in discovering new
indications and therapeutic targets of drugs and it usually takes 3-12
years on the average to be completed whereas in drug discovery, an
average of 10-17 years is needed for the whole process. This is because
in repositioning, research process goes directly to preclinical testing
and clinical trials since both the toxicological and pharmacological
profile of the drug to be repositioned is known, thus reducing time,
risk, and costs. Based on 2009 statistics, 30% of all drugs sold in
that year are products of repositioning while only one out of one
million potential drug candidates have the possibility of entry into
clinical studies with a tendency of having a significant number of
failures. Hence the urgent need to discover new uses of existing drugs
especially with the emergence of human and animal diseases such as
Covid-19 and the high incidence of drug tolerance and resistance. Drug
repositioning is therefore considered as an alternative way as it
entails the discovery of new therapeutic indications for already
existing drugs.