Recent efforts to repurpose disulfiram, a drug used in alcohol-aversion therapy for decades, for other diseases suggest the molecule is almost an in vitro panacea: it seems to be effective against various cancers (by multiple mechanisms of action), Alzheimer's disease, obesity and metabolic syndrome, pythiosis, lyme borreliosis, COVID-19, and sepsis. The problem is that the molecule almost does not exist in the body after ingestion and, most importantly, is not the pharmacologically active entity in alcoholic patients, being rather a prodrug. This prodrug is widely and misleadingly used in many in vitro and in vivo experiments regardless of its physiologically reachable concentration or its metabolism in vivo.
- Publikační typ
- časopisecké články MeSH
The current Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has shown us that the pharmaceutical research community can organize and administer large nonprofit clinical trials (RECOVERY and SOLIDARITY) and achieve the swift development of common, unpatentable drugs for a new indication: in this case an old, inexpensive drug, dexamethasone, for COVID-19. Why is it that such nonprofit efforts are so rare and are not organized as a systemic, routine part of drug development in the public interest? Based on my own experience with repurposing the alcohol-abuse drug disulfiram (Antabuse) for cancer, I identify at least four serious deadlocks to development of nonprofit drugs. All of these obstacles should be addressed to leverage the potential of the COVID-19 pandemic for better future healthcare systems in all countries around the world.
- MeSH
- COVID-19 * MeSH
- disulfiram MeSH
- lidé MeSH
- neziskové organizace MeSH
- pandemie * MeSH
- poskytování zdravotní péče MeSH
- Check Tag
- lidé MeSH
- Publikační typ
- časopisecké články MeSH
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- organizační inovace * MeSH
- rozšiřování inovací * MeSH
- Publikační typ
- dopisy MeSH
- komentáře MeSH
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- biomedicínské technologie normy MeSH
- celosvětové zdraví * MeSH
- dostupnost zdravotnických služeb normy MeSH
- lidé MeSH
- sociální spravedlnost * MeSH
- Check Tag
- lidé MeSH
- mužské pohlaví MeSH
- Publikační typ
- dopisy MeSH
- komentáře MeSH
