Maastricht University and a number of international partners will receive an EU subsidy of 23 million euros to set up a platform for ‘drug repurposing’. That is the application of existing medicines in diseases other than those for which they were originally developed. The partners will be working on the REPO4EU platform for the next seven years.
Maastricht UMC+ reports this on its website. It concerns a collaboration of a total of 28 partners from ten countries. The core of the approach lies in a better understanding of underlying mechanisms or genetic causes of specific diseases. Most of these mechanisms and causes are still poorly understood, which is why diseases are treated symptomatically. And by specialty. The European project therefore wants to combat pigeonholing in medicine.
Development time
In addition to better and integrated treatment of diseases, there are more advantages to the use of existing medicines, MUMC+ writes. The development time of drugs is expected to decrease. Existing medicines can also be approved faster than new medicines. This saves costs and accelerates the development of treatments for currently chronic diseases.