title: Drug Repurposing Hypothesis Generation Using the "RE:fine Drugs" System.
abstract: The promise of drug repurposing is that existing drugs may be used for new disease indications in order to curb the high costs and time for approval. The goal of computational methods for drug repurposing is to enable solutions for safer, cheaper and faster drug discovery. Towards this end, we developed a novel method that integrates genetic and clinical phenotype data from large-scale GWAS and PheWAS studies with detailed drug information on the concept of transitive Drug-Gene-Disease triads. We created "RE:fine Drugs," a freely available, interactive dashboard that automates gene, disease and drug-based searches to identify drug repurposing candidates. This web-based tool supports a user-friendly interface that includes an array of advanced search and export options. Results can be prioritized in a variety of ways, including but not limited to, biomedical literature support, strength and statistical significance of GWAS and/or PheWAS associations, disease indications and molecular drug targets. Here we provide a protocol that illustrates the functionalities available in the "RE:fine Drugs" system and explores the different advanced options through a case study.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Informatics, The Ohio State University; Kelly.Regan@osumc.edu.
authors.forename: Kelly
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Regan
authors.affiliation: Research Information Solutions and Innovation, The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital.
authors.forename: Soheil
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Moosavinasab
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Informatics, The Ohio State University.
authors.forename: Philip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Payne
authors.affiliation: Research Information Solutions and Innovation, The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital.
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lin
mesh_terms: D055808:Drug Discovery; D058492:Drug Repositioning; D006801:Humans; D012984:Software