PharmaRedefine: A database server for repurposing drugs against pathogenic bacteria

Abstract

Pathogenic bacteria represent a formidable threat to human health, necessitating substantial resources for prevention and treatment. With the escalating concern regarding antibiotic resistance, there is a pressing need for innovative approaches to combat these pathogens. Repurposing existing drugs offers a promising solution. Our present work hypothesizes that proteins harboring ligand-binding pockets with similar chemical environments may be able to bind the same drug. To facilitate this drug-repurposing strategy against pathogenic bacteria, we introduce an online server, PharmaRedefine. Leveraging a combination of sequence and structure alignment and protein pocket similarity analysis, this platform enables the prediction of potential targets in representative bacteria for specific FDA-approved drugs. This novel approach holds tremendous potential for drug repositioning that effectively combat infections caused by pathogenic bacteria. PharmaRedefine is freely available at http://guolab.mpu.edu.mo/pharmredefine.