Cancer continues to be one of the leading contributors towards global disease burden. According to NIH, cancer incidence rate per year will increase to 23.6 million by 2030. Even though cancer continues to be a major proportion of the disease burden worldwide, it has the lowest clinical trial success rate amongst other diseases. Hence, there is an unmet need for novel, affordable and effective anti-neoplastic medications. As a result, a growing interest has sparkled amongst researchers towards drug repurposing. Drug repurposing follows the principle of polypharmacology, which states, “any drug with multiple targets or off targets can present several modes of action”. Drug repurposing also known as drug rechanneling, or drug repositioning is an economic and reliable approach that identifies new disease treatment of already approved drugs. Repurposing guarantees expedited access of drugs to the patients as these drugs are already FDA approved and their safety and toxicity profile is completely established. Epidemiological studies have identified the decreased occurrence of oncological or non-oncological conditions in patients undergoing treatment with FDA approved drugs. Data from multiple experimental studies and clinical observations have depicted that several non-neoplastic drugs have potential anticancer activity. In this review, we have summarized the potential anti-cancer effects of anti-psychotic, anti-malarial, anti-viral and anti-emetic drugs with a brief overview on their mechanism and pathways in different cancer types. This review highlights promising evidences for the repurposing of drugs in oncology.

癌症仍然是全球疾病负担的主要贡献者之一。根据美国国立卫生研究院的数据，到 2030 年，每年的癌症发病率将增加到 2360 万。尽管癌症仍然是全球疾病负担的主要部分，但它在其他疾病中的临床试验成功率最低。因此，对新颖、负担得起和有效的抗肿瘤药物的需求尚未得到满足。因此，研究人员对药物再利用的兴趣日益浓厚。药物再利用遵循多药理学原则，即“任何具有多靶点或脱靶点的药物都可以呈现多种作用模式”。药物再利用也称为药物再通道或药物重新定位，是一种经济且可靠的方法，可识别已批准药物的新疾病治疗方法。由于这些药物已经获得 FDA 批准，并且它们的安全性和毒性特征已经完全确定，因此重新利用可确保加快药物对患者的使用。流行病学研究表明，在接受 FDA 批准药物治疗的患者中，肿瘤或非肿瘤疾病的发生率有所降低。来自多项实验研究和临床观察的数据表明，几种非肿瘤药物具有潜在的抗癌活性。在这篇综述中，我们总结了抗精神病药物、抗疟疾药物、抗病毒药物和止吐药物的潜在抗癌作用，并简要概述了它们在不同癌症类型中的作用机制和途径。这篇综述强调了在肿瘤学中重新利用药物的有希望的证据。