Drug Repurposing in CNS Disorders

Nowadays, most neurodegenerative disorders lack effective treatment. The current cost of these diseases on society emphasizes the necessity of developing novel treatment approaches. Identifying novel indications for already approved drugs, or “drug repurposing”, is a promising approach to the conventional drug discovery process that can be used to find the therapeutic molecule. Exploring novel therapeutic benefits of currently available drug candidates in a variety of human diseases, including neurodegenerative disorders, is becoming a significant part of the drug development process. This book chapter deals with a comprehensive review of drug repurposing in central nervous system disorders. In this chapter, we have discussed the overview of CNS disorders as well as enumerated their current treatment approach. Then, we have highlighted different drug repurposing strategies, including the computational approaches. In addition, a few case studies involving drug repurposing for specific CNS disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Spinal muscular atrophy, and Epilepsy are presented in this chapter.