Discovery and development of novel anti-cancer drugs are expensive and time consuming. Systems biology approaches have revealed that a drug being developed for a non-cancer indication can hit other targets as well, which play critical roles in cancer progression. Since drugs for non-cancer indications would have already gone through the preclinical and partial or full clinical development, repurposing such drugs for hematological malignancies would cost much less, and drastically reduce the development time, which is evident in case of thalidomide. Here, we have reviewed some of the drugs for their potential to repurpose for treating the hematological malignancies. We have also enlisted resources that can be helpful in drug repurposing.

新型抗癌药物的发现和开发既昂贵又耗时。系统生物学方法表明，为非癌症适应症开发的药物也可以击中其他目标，这些目标在癌症进展中起关键作用。由于用于非癌症适应症的药物已经经历了临床前和部分或全部临床开发，因此将此类药物重新用于血液系统恶性肿瘤的成本将大大降低，并大大缩短开发时间，这在沙利度胺的情况下很明显。在这里，我们回顾了一些药物用于治疗血液系统恶性肿瘤的潜力。我们还征集了有助于药物再利用的资源。