A novel drug repurposing approach for non-small cell lung cancer using deep learning.

Drug repurposing is an attractive and pragmatic way offering reduced risks and development time in the complicated process of drug discovery. In the past, drug repurposing has been largely accidental and serendipitous. The most successful examples so far have not involved a systematic approach. Nowadays, remarkable advances in drugs, diseases and bioinformatic knowledge are offering great opportunities for designing novel drug repurposing approach through comprehensive understanding of drug information. In this study, we introduced a novel drug repurposing approach based on transcriptomic data and chemical structures using deep learning. One strong candidate for repurposing has been identified. Pimozide is an anti-dyskinesia agent that is used for the suppression of motor and phonic tics in patients with Tourette's Disorder. However, our pipeline proposed it as a strong candidate for treating non-small cell lung cancer. The cytotoxicity of pimozide against A549 cell lines has been validated.
Competing Interests: The authors of this paper have read the journal’s policy and have the following All authors are paid employees of Beijing Deep Intelligent Pharma Technologies Co., Ltd. (https://www.dip-ai.com/). There are no patents, products in development or marketed products associated with this research to declare. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.