Computational Repurposing of Drugs: A Review

Drug repurposing is the modern technology for identifying the new therapeutic property of approved and operational drug. De novo drug discovery faces many challenges including clinical trials, time and cost. To overcome these aspects drug repurposing has evolved as promising approach, that has benefits like previously studied safety profiles and bypassing the early developmental changes and accelerating clinical trials by reducing the cost up to 60%. "Omics" technologies, computational capabilities imbibed with the artificial intelligence caters the drug repurposing for new targets or pathogens. By using virtual screening, molecular docking, and sequence similarity maps, researchers can identify multiple therapeutic effects by a drug. In the year 2025, 47 drugs were approved by FDA after drug repurposing. Nearly 45% of drugs repurposing activity in 2025 were focused on treatment of cancers. The global scale drug repurposing market has been increasing continuously and reached $36.87 billion in 2025. In this review we focus on how drug repurposing activity enhances the use of approved drug for treatment of variety of diseases or targets.