Toxicogenomic identification of repositioned therapy for a monogenic disease

Abstract

The cost of drug development from initial concept to FDA approval has been estimated to be about 2.6 billion USD.1 This cost precludes development of targeted therapies for rare diseases such as monogenetic cardiomyopathies. As part of the Library of Integrated Network-based Cellular Signatures (LINCS) program funded by the NIH, the Broad Institute of MIT has publicly released transcriptional profiles quantifying the effects of more than 25,000 perturbagens on the expression of 978 genes in up to 77 cell lines.2 Transcriptomics has been shown to be a powerful tool in repurposing drugs3,4 and this dataset affords us the unique opportunity to systematically identify small molecule mimics or inhibitors of specific genes, thereby identifying novel treatments for genetic disorders. In this report, we take this approach to identify a novel drug therapy for a monogenic form of familial dilated cardiomyopathy with the transcriptional profile of FDA approved drugs. This approach could potentially be replicated for a wide range of monogenic diseases.