Every morning with my first big mug of coffee in bed with the dogs, I read the news on the BBC website, the New York Times, CNN and a Swedish compilation called Omni.
Over the years, I have written many blog posts inspired by medical news from the New York Times. Here is the latest article that really caught my attention, titled “Doctors told him he was going to die. Then AI saved his life”.
The article tells the story of how AI is now being used to scour old research papers for unexpected effects or side effects of medications that are now often both old and cheap, to indicate whether they may be worth trying for conditions beyond their original FDA approved indications.
The pharmaceutical companies are investing heavily in new treatments for common conditions, but not so much for rare conditions where the market is too small to ever recapture the cost of developing brand new drugs.
Here are a couple of quotes from the New York Times article:
In labs around the world, scientists are using A.I. to search among existing medicines for treatments that work for rare diseases. Drug repurposing, as it’s called, is not new, but the use of machine learning is speeding up the process — and could expand the treatment possibilities for people with rare diseases and few options.
Repurposing is fairly common in pharmaceuticals: Minoxidil, developed as a blood pressure medication, has been repurposed to treat hair loss. Viagra, originally marketed to treat a cardiac condition, is now used as an erectile dysfunction drug. Semaglutide, a diabetes drug, has become best known for its ability to help people lose weight.
https://acdw.substack.com/p/viagra-the-back-story
I put a hyperlink on the name Viagra to a video I made a while back about how that drug was discovered when there turned out to be a side effect of a new compound for pulmonary hypertension. I have also written about doxepin, a very old antidepressant that is possibly the most powerful antihistamine on the planet and a few other drugs with other uses. This kind of stuff fascinates me. I often say or write that drugs have personalities and if you really get to know them, you can almost predict where else they might be of use in our personal black bags of tricks. This is called “off label” use. It costs big money to go back to the FDA to get their approval for a new indication for a drug that is already or soon off patent and therefore inexpensive.