title: Promiscuous drugs as therapeutics for chemokine receptors.
abstract: Chemokine receptor antagonists that held much promise for the treatment of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases have recently performed poorly in clinical trials, resulting in disappointment for both pharmaceutical companies and patients. This review focuses on the redundancy of the molecular target as one potential reason for the failure of some of these antagonists to fulfil their initial promise, and discusses the use of drugs that are capable of interacting with more than one drug target - so-called promiscuous drugs - as possible approaches to overcome this difficulty. Several clinically approved promiscuous drugs, such as aspirin and olanzapine, are already used successfully. This review discusses examples of promiscuous drugs for G-protein-coupled receptors, including progress in developing dual-specific chemokine receptor antagonists, and considers evidence for the possible therapeutic utility of such drugs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacy, Touro University, Vallejo, CA 94592, USA. horuk@pacbell.net
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Horuk
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015195:Drug Design; D006801:Humans; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000737:chemistry; D019338:Polypharmacy; D019707:Receptors, Chemokine / Q000037:antagonists & inhibitors*; D043562:Receptors, G-Protein-Coupled / Q000037:antagonists & inhibitors; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
chemical_list: D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations; D019707:Receptors, Chemokine; D043562:Receptors, G-Protein-Coupled