In silico repurposing of clinically approved drugs as potential BRAF inhibitors: a pharmacophore-based virtual screening and experimental investigation
Hooriehsadat Amini, Negin Ebrahimi, Sayedali Mousavirahimi, Mozhdeh Zamani, Kowsar Bagherzadeh, Hamed Montazeri, Homa Azizian · 2026
Read In silico repurposing of clinically approved drugs as potential BRAF inhibitors: a pharmacophore-based virtual screening and experimental investigation by Hooriehsadat Amini, Negin Ebrahimi, Sayedali Mousavirahimi, Mozhdeh Zamani, Kowsar Bagherzadeh, Hamed Montazeri, Homa Azizian (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13543525.txt.
Description
Hooriehsadat Amini's team published a 2026 study on reusing approved medicines as blockers of BRAF. That growth-signal protein's V600E mutation drives several cancers, and current BRAF drugs often fail through resistance or side effects. The team built a shape-based search model from five known inhibitors and screened a library of approved drugs. They then narrowed hundreds of options through docking and molecular dynamics simulations against normal and mutant BRAF.
The heart drug ticagrelor emerged on top, binding the target about as stably as the reference inhibitor regorafenib. Lab tests in colorectal cancer cell lines of unlike BRAF status then tested ticagrelor, along with pioglitazone and nilotinib from the same screen. The drugs sharply slowed cancer cell growth and pushed cells toward death. A known, safety-tested drug turning into a cancer candidate is the appeal of repurposing, though clinical proof remains distant.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Hooriehsadat Amini, Negin Ebrahimi, Sayedali Mousavirahimi, Mozhdeh Zamani, Kowsar Bagherzadeh, Hamed Montazeri, Homa Azizian |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 57381 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |