Traditional de novo drug discovery and development involves an HTS campaign for de novo candidate hits and requires highly specialized screening facilities and compound libraries containing several million compounds. It is a time consuming and expensive process. As the regulation for drug safety and efficacy is increasingly getting complex, the cost of developing new drugs is keeping skyrocket. Drug repositioning, also known as old drugs for new uses, is an effective strategy to find new indications for existing drugs and has recently drawn attention and has led to several blockbuster drugs because of its high efficiency and low-cost. High-content screens, new biomarkers, noninvasive imaging techniques, and advanced in bioinformatics have created new opportunities for pursuing novel indications for approved compounds.

Approved drugs all have known and well-characterized bioactivities, safety and bioavailability – properties which could dramatically accelerate drug development and optimization. Hits from this set will provide a significant head start in any drug optimization program.

In addition, a growing number of compounds have been identified from this library that can functionally replace reprogramming transcription factors, enhance efficiency of iPSC generation and accelerate the reprogramming process by single use or a combination of several molecules.