Network medicine for disease module identification and drug repurposing with the NeDRex platform

Traditional drug discovery is a time consuming and costly process that has seen fewer results over time and is currently facing an efficacy crisis. Repurposing of drugs already on the market is an alternative approach. It uses information from already performed clinical trials and studies on the proteins and pathways targeted by the drugs.

In this talk, I will describe the NeDRex platform developed as part of the Repotrial project to aid with drug repurposing. At the core of NeDRex is a database which integrates disease, gene, and protein relationships. It can be accessed via an API, a Cytoscape app, or a web tool. A user can start with a disorder of interest, or a list of seed genes, and build a disease module around this initial list, capturing directly associated proteins. Furthermore, drug ranking algorithms can be used to highlight best repurposing opportunities.