A Maximum Flow-Based Approach to Prioritize Drugs for Drug Repurposing of Chronic Diseases

The discovery of new drugs is required in the time of global aging and increasing populations. Traditional drug development strategies are expensive, time-consuming, and have high risks. Thus, drug repurposing, which treats new/other diseases using existing drugs, has become a very admired tactic. It can also be referred to as the re-investigation of the existing drugs that failed to indicate the usefulness for the new diseases. Previously published literature used maximum flow approaches to identify new drug targets for drug-resistant infectious diseases but not for drug repurposing. Therefore, we are proposing a maximum flow-based protein–protein interactions (PPIs) network analysis approach to identify new drug targets (proteins) from the targets of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) drugs and their associated drugs for chronic diseases (such as breast cancer, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)) treatment. Experimental results showed that we have successfully turned the drug repurposing into a maximum flow problem. Our top candidates of drug repurposing, Guanidine, Dasatinib, and Phenethyl Isothiocyanate for breast cancer, IBD, and COPD were experimentally validated by other independent research as the potential candidate drugs for these diseases, respectively. This shows the usefulness of the proposed maximum flow approach for drug repurposing.