**9. Future perspectives**

The boom in drug repurposing strategies may occupy the existing drugs from pharmacopoeia and the drug bank may get exhausted for further repurposing. Therefore, pharmaceutical companies with advanced biological and technological expertise should invest in biodiversity-oriented drug discovery programs to discover and develop early-stage new pharmacophoric compounds


*Trends in Molecular Aspects and Therapeutic Applications of Drug Repurposing for Infectious… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100858*

#### **Table 1.**

*Directed repurposed drugs for infections [26–28].*

and fill their anti-infective pipelines while still taking the advantage of drug repurposing. Further, the advancement in nanotechnology may lead us to design better therapeutic formulations of repurposed drugs targeting pulmonary infections such as multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. Drug repurposing raises several concerns in terms of quality and ethical integrity of preclinical and clinical research specially during emergency pandemic situations such as COVID-19 involving accelerated drug approval based on statistical exploration of small, scientific data with the real-world population. This issue may not only increase the chances of adverse events; also, if the drug is withdrawn, the pharmaceutical industry may lose public confidence over healthcare needs. According to patent regulations, there are no safeguards for Intellectual property (IP) protection of drug development through the repositioning method. IP protection for repositioned drugs is limited. If the current evidence is not sufficient and does not meet the standards of according to regulatory guidelines, regulatory agencies such as the FDA or EMA, further preclinical and/or clinical studies may be necessary.
