The process of developing and evaluating new drugs is time-consuming, expensive, logistically challenging and potentially dangerous to patients involved in the studies.  It would therefore be refreshing to find a new way to advance a drug through this difficult process.  Repurposing existing FDA-approved drugs for new uses is one way this can be accomplished.  Here, Danish researchers analyzed medical records retrospectively and found that patients who continued taking an anti-alcoholism drug (disulfiram) during cancer treatment had better outcomes than those patients who stopped taking the disulfiram while battling cancer.  Then they identified the anti-cancer molecular mechanism of disulfiram in the laboratory.

Disulfiram