Drug repurposing: Innovative antimicrobial strategies for discovering new antibiotics

As bacterial resistance escalates and new antibiotic development remains costly, the search for novel antimicrobial therapies has become a global imperative. Here, drug repurposing, the process of finding new uses for existing drugs, presents a promising strategy to address current bottlenecks in developing novel antibacterial agents. Compared to new drug development, drug repurposing offers advantages such as lower costs and better-established clinical safety, making it a potentially effective way to address the bacterial resistance crisis. This chapter introduces the latest advancements in applying drug repurposing in the antimicrobial field. It showcases experimental and computational drug repurposing methods, along with some current successful clinical application cases. In addition, it also analyzes the scientific, intellectual property, and regulatory challenges faced by drug repurposing. Overall, drug repurposing provides a viable path toward discovering new antimicrobial therapies and holds great promise in tackling the global bacterial resistance crisis.