Drug-repurposing identified the combination of Trolox C and Cytisine for the treatment of type 2 diabetes

BACKGROUND: Drug-induced gene expression dataset (for example Connectivity Map, CMap) represent a valuable resource for drug-repurposing, a class of methods for identifying novel indications for approved drugs. Recently, CMap-based methods have successfully applied to identifying drugs for a number of diseases. However, currently few gene expression based methods are available for the repurposing of combined drugs. Increasing evidence has shown that the combination of drugs may valid for novel indications. METHOD: Here, for this purpose, we presented a simple CMap-based scoring system to predict novel indications for the combination of two drugs. We then confirmed the effectiveness of the predicted drug combination in an animal model of type 2 diabetes. RESULTS: We applied the presented scoring system to type 2 diabetes and identified a candidate combination of two drugs, Trolox C and Cytisine. Finally, we confirmed that the predicted combined drugs are effective for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. CONCLUSION: The presented scoring system represents one novel method for drug repurposing, which would provide helps for greatly extended the space of drugs.