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The Broad Institute hosts a very interesting transcriptomic dataset called CMap [1] that was intended to facilitate rapid drug repurposing. Having studied this dataset and worked with the data generators and software teams, I can say that drug repurposing is NOT as straightforward as people think. However, I agree that as a strategy drug repurposing is a useful tool in the arsenal generally.

[1] https://clue.io

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Interesting....I'll have a close look at this, thank you. I didn't mean to imply drug repurposing was straightforward, certainly as you say this is very challenging. I guess my thinking was that there might be relatively lower hanging fruit here (if Pharma companies have very little incentive to exhaustively search for repurposing targets for off-patent meds, maybe only a non-profit would be willing to do this) than say de-novo development.

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